The End of Civilization As We Know It
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: First a mouse, then three guys named Ivan, and all of southern California might be next.


Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.

Rated: PG, language, missing fingers, and dead mice.

**Author's Notes:** Mr. Patterson, late of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Bureau of Land Management (in _Road Trip_ and _Dry Heat_, respectively) is back and, boy, is he in need of a loose cannon.

There are lots of references to those two stories in here, and briefer ones to _Dead Wait_, and _Night and Day, _and_ All Things Change But Truth._.

My thanks to Cheri, SusanZ, and Owl for corrections, plot suggestions, and lots of encouragement.

**The End of Civilization as We Know It**

By L. M. Lewis

"See, an ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations.  
Repo Man spends his life getting into tense situations.  
Tense situations kid, get into five or six of them a day  
and it don't mean shit anymore."  
'Bud' in _Repo Man_

**Chapter 1—Bits and Pieces**

The knock on the gatehouse door was unexpected, mostly because Hardcastle rarely knocked, but partly because McCormick knew he was away for the weekend. He didn't bother with much supposing, though, before he went to answer it, despite his previous experience with unannounced company ranging from psychotic killers on the lam, to wayward half-brothers looking for his wayward father. Actually, it had been just one of each.

But, heck, how unlucky could a guy be on a regular basis?

And still, the first words out of his mouth, when he opened the door and saw who stood on the other side, were, "Oh, shit. _You_?"

Mr. Patterson was giving him an equally jaundiced look, his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of an overcoat that looked out of place for the weather. He was leaning, with more casualness than usual, against the outer part of the doorframe. He was sans his customary dark glasses, and squinting at the younger man.

"Well, if you're looking for Hardcastle, he'll be back tomorrow, maybe late tonight if he hooks his limit." Mark stood squarely in the doorway. "And if you're here to arrest me, I haven't done anything lately. Or are you still with the Bureau of Land Management?" he added with an air of annoyance.

The coat was a bit much for the temperature; Patterson had a sheen of sweat on his brow. He was breathing a little fast, too. Mark had a sudden, sinking feeling, and reached out with one hand just as the man began a slow topple forward, out on his feet.

"Dammit," McCormick muttered perfunctorily as he dragged him inside.

He took a quick look out through the door, saw nothing untoward, and quickly closed and locked it. Then he dragged again, this time grabbing Patterson beneath the armpits and giving a solid jerk to get him in motion. The man's hands had come free of his pockets, and the handkerchief, wrapped tightly around the right one, was soaked red to the point of glistening.

"_Dammit._"

Rags, cold water, a small pile of towels, and a vain attempt to keep the stuff off the carpet ensued. A brief thought of calling 911 was shelved. This was Patterson. He must've noticed he was missing a finger and a half, and if he'd wanted something official done about it, he wouldn't have come to Gulls Way.

It was only a matter of a few moments before Patterson was groaning his way back to consciousness, and, a moment after that, McCormick managed to heft him, half cooperating, onto the sofa.

"What the hell happened to you?" he asked, despite the deepest misgivings that he would regret hearing the story.

Patterson was looking around, blinking owlishly, as if he wasn't quite sure where he was or how he'd gotten here. Mark helped him out.

"You came here. Gulls Way. Hardcastle's place, remember?"

Patterson frowned and nodded once, then looked down at his hand, swathed in a gradually pinking wet washcloth and resting on a small pile of hand towels. Encouraged by what looked to be signs of intelligent life, McCormick added, "And what the hell happened to your hand?"

Patterson lifted the edge of the cloth and studied the damage for a moment, without much change in expression.

"I'm right-handed," he muttered. "They ought to have started with the left." It was a quiet critique, without much emotion, maybe a little regret. He still looked gray and pasty.

Mark was on his feet. He fetched a glass of water from the sink and handed it to the man. Patterson took it, after a moment's thought, in his left hand and drank, tentatively at first, and then with more enthusiasm. He finally handed the empty glass back.

Mark sat down again, glass on the coffee table. "Okay," he began again, "_who _did this to you?"

Patterson frowned, as though the question was a hard one, and finally muttered, "I'm not sure." His frown now focused more closely on McCormick. "And I came here to see you, not Hardcastle." There was a slow, silent pause after this, as though neither man could quite believe what had just been said.

"I haven't told a damn soul about the nerve gas," McCormick finally replied, which, while not exactly true, couldn't be proven otherwise as far as he knew. Besides, he figured the clean-up, let alone the cover-up, must have involved dozens of people.

"It's not about that," Patterson scowled. "And I think maybe the less you remind me about that the better."

"Okay, well . . . then what?"

Patterson looked back down at what was left of his hand and gave something that approximated a weary sigh. "Look, I've read your file. I need somebody to repossess a car for me."

"Repossess? As in _steal_?"

"'Repossess', as in take back from someone who doesn't rightfully have possession of it."

"Oh," Mark shook his head, "now _that_ can be a very subjective thing. Trust me. And why the hell do you need _me_ to do it, anyway? Don't you have a whole bunch of guys in paneled vans with walkie-talkies and all that? Who are you working for these days?"

Patterson seemed to be giving this some thought. He finally said, "I may be between positions right now."

"In that case," Mark sat back, looking at him very fixedly, "not a chance. Not that I had any intention of saying 'yes' in _any _case."

Patterson's expression had gone grim.

"What if I told you," he began, then he took a heavy breath, "that there was something very important about this particular car? What if I told you that if it were to fall into the wrong hands, it might mean the end of civilization as we know it?"

"What _if_?" Mark was on his feet now, leaning forward a little, giving Patterson a very hard stare. "What if I asked you to be just a little more specific for once." A demand. Most certainly not a question.

Patterson's grayness seemed to be increasing by the second.

"And you'd better put your head down," Mark added in a grumble.

Patterson nodded once, and turned a little to the side, trying to lift his feet up onto the couch. He needed help with that, but, in the end, he'd gotten himself into a more horizontal position, and Mark went to fetch some first-aid supplies from the bathroom.

When he got back, the man's eyes were closed. McCormick sat down on the edge of the coffee table and lifted the washcloth. He shook his head once. "So, _why'd_ they do it to you? For the car?"

"'Course it was about the car," Patterson replied, in a surprisingly clear voice.

"And you didn't tell them, huh?"

Patterson didn't bother with an answer this time.

"So," Mark frowned as he rustled through the first-aid kit, looking for some gauze pads, "why only half of the one finger?"

"That was as far as they got." Patterson said matter-of-factly.

Mark paused for a moment, considering the implications.

Patterson had his eyes open now, and was studying him. "The idea is to get as much mileage as possible out of each digit," he finally explained patiently. "Taking them off in pieces makes a lot more sense. Wouldn't be much point in lopping the whole thing off at once, would there?"

Mark felt a little queasy. He shook his head.

"You've never been tortured, eh?"

"Ah . . . once. Cattle prod. Former Nazis."

Patterson gave this a thoughtful nod, which appeared entirely accepting of the statement at face value.

"Only I didn't have a clue about what they were asking me," Mark added ruefully.

"Well," Paterson admitted, "that always makes it easier." He held out his hand so that McCormick could set to the bandaging.

"So . . ." Mark applied a few more layers of padding and then started winding the gauze loosely, "what's so damn important about this car?"

"There's something in it," Patterson said vaguely.

"Yeah," Mark said with rising aggravation, "that much I figured. Hell, don't tell me, it's a sixty-four Chevy Malibu with New Mexico tags."

"No," Patterson stared at him blankly for a moment. "It's a gray Olds Cutlass. Late seventies, I think. California plates." The puzzlement hadn't left the man's face.

"You don't watch many movies, do you, Patterson?" Mark sighed. "Never mind. Just tell me what we're dealing with here. I hope someday to be able to father children."

"I don't believe it's radioactive." Patterson grimaced as the last few winds of gauze were tucked in and taped. "At least that was not my impression." He wedged himself back into a half-sitting position and took his hand back into his lap, cradling it wearily.

"Yeah," Mark said, equally weary. "So then, what _is_ it?"

"I'm not sure. Honestly."

"You and 'honestly' don't work too well together."

"_Really_," Patterson repeated, with no fluster or even appreciable irritation, just weariness. "I know where the car is. I know I'm in no condition to retrieve it, but I don't think it will present much of a challenge for you. The only people who were in a position to betray me, to the men who questioned me, were in my own chain of command, so I don't know who I can trust at this point."

"You'd trust _me_?" Mark asked with doubtful surprise.

Patterson looked at him straight on. He finally let out a breath that turned into a sigh. "I never said you were _malicious_, just lacking in anything even remotely resembling common sense. But this is a straightforward, relatively simple task, for someone with your skill set. And my options are limited."

Mark stared at him in frank disbelief. "Miss the lecture on personnel management, Patterson?" he finally ground out, between his nearly clenched teeth.

"Most of the time I work alone."

"Well," Mark shook his head, "lucky for you, the guy I work with talks to me like that all the time."

Patterson's returned smile was a little thin.

"So, where is this car?"

"In a garage, behind a house up in Encino. You have a map handy?" Patterson asked, sitting up a little more.

"Yeah, and you have the keys?"

"No, I couldn't take the time to hunt for them when I was escaping. It was only a matter of time before the bodies were discovered."

Mark cast him a worried glance as he got up and retrieved a map from his desk.

"Don't worry," Patterson said calmly, "these deaths will not be brought to the attention of the authorities."

Mark somehow had little doubt about that, and he was about to say as much when he was interrupted by another knock on the door. He half jumped and then cast a quick sharp look back at Patterson.

"I wasn't followed. I'm sure of that."

Mark frowned and stepped over to the door, easing it open just far enough to recognize that the guy on the other side was in a postal uniform.

"Package," the postman announced, "for Milton Hardcastle and Mark McCormick." It was not the usual carrier. "I need a signature."

Mark opened the door the rest of the way, reached for the clipboard, and signed by the 'X'. The parcel was handed over. It was shoebox-sized, but heavier than a pair of shoes. The return address was Worden, Arkansas.

"Thanks." He watched the swift departure of the carrier on his appointed rounds. He did another quick survey of the drive and grounds, still nothing untoward. He closed the door and latched it.

He stepped back in to the main room and sat down, placing the box in the coffee table in front of him.

"What is it?" Patterson eyed the package suspiciously.

"By weight, I'd guess fruitcake." Mark hefted it one more time, just a few inches, and sat it back down. "Yup, fruitcake."

Patterson's eyes narrowed. "You're sure? You were expecting it?"

"No," Mark gave him a disbelieving look, "I wasn't _expecting_ it, but it's from Worden. Hardcastle's aunts. They bake a lot, especially this time of year."

"Did you recognize the postman?"

Mark felt his exasperation rising by the second. "No, but it was a special delivery, and it's _December_, you know, extra routes and all that. It's a _fruitcake_, for Pete's sake, or maybe some cranberry scones." He tore into the brown paper and uncovered a holly-and-red box with a note taped to the top. '_To our boys. Hope you enjoy it. Love, Aunt Zora and Aunt May.' _ It was written in May's feathery script.

"See," Mark said, reason triumphing over creeping paranoia as he opened the lid. The fruitcake glistened within, redolent of rum and cinnamon. "Fruitcake" He tipped the box so toward the other man. "From the Aunts."

Patterson squinted at the box and then McCormick. "If you say so." A moment of unconvinced silence passed before he added. "Fruitcake, it's insidious. Something like that, easy to . . . _adulterate_. How would you ever know the difference?"

Mark frown at the older man, then down at the box. Then, still frowning, he said, "It's from the _Aunts_. I don't think they're trying to kill us . . . not intentionally, at any rate." He put the lid back on the box, laid it back down on the brown paper, and pushed it gently toward the middle of the coffee table.

"Encino," Patterson intruded after another brief moment of silence.

Mark looked up, dragging himself back to the matter at hand. Patterson had leaned forward, groaning a little, and taken the map, unfolding it one-handed.

"Paper," he said, "pencil."

Mark provided them, then watched the man laboriously write out the address and directions in slow, left-handed, block letters.

"And what do I do once I have it?" Mark asked, not quite sure when he'd agreed to do it, but suddenly aware that he had—that the idea had become _real_.

"Bring it here," Paterson said, after a moment's thought. "That'd probably be the best. And don't open the trunk," he added, ominously.

"Who owns the house in Encino?" Mark asked, as he took the directions.

"Doesn't matter," Patterson said with calm certainty. "He won't be home." He laid his head back again, closing his eyes. "Just get the damn car."

Mark stuffed the piece of paper in his pocket and picked up the map, studying it briefly before he refolded it. He glanced at Patterson, whose breathing seemed to have evened out a little, as though he might be on the verge of sleep. Or maybe he'd passed out again. The dressing seemed to be doing its job; at least it didn't look like the man would bleed to death while he was away.

McCormick mounted the stairs to the loft, opened the lower drawer in the desk, and took out a familiar case. He rattled deeper for a slim jim, a wire cutter, and a pair of very thin leather gloves. Equipment complete, he returned to the living room.

"I'll need your car. I'm not taking the Coyote and leaving it up there."

Patterson grunted, not opening his eyes, and fished in his pocket, the left one, Mark was relieved to see. He brought out a rental car company key ring, only moderately bloodstained, and that all dried.

Mark took it with a grimace of distaste, and departed.

**Chapter 2**—**A Nondescript Engine of Universal Destruction**

_It was_, he thought as he surveyed his target from a short way down the block,_ like riding a bicycle_. He wasn't even getting much of a buzz off of it. The judge would be pleased to hear that, not that he had any intention of sharing this information with him, if he could avoid it.

There was some residual, nagging concern. The things Patterson dealt with tended to make a person glow in the dark or collapse in a twitching, drooling heap. And now even Patterson was operating without a flight plan.

But, in their brief, but intense, periods of acquaintance, McCormick had not known the man to be given to hyperbole, so if Patterson said it was a matter of life or death, Mark figured you could pretty much rely on the death part, at least.

He stepped out of the car and walked purposefully up the street. No slinking, not one iota of furtiveness. He _belonged_. He didn't even glance around as he turned in at the proper driveway. If someone was watching, they would see him, whether he saw them or not.

It was a detached garage, brick, and set back, the kind that would have a side door, he was pleased to note. He was taking a chance, not checking the house first, but Patterson had been fairly convincing when he'd said it was empty.

The proper tools were already in his hands, and the side door yielded in under a minute. To the casual observer, he might have merely been fumbling with his keys. He took another chance, flipping the switch just inside the door. There was the usual collection of tools and gardening supplies along the wall, nothing out of the ordinary. The car was a Cutlass, late seventies, four-door, gray, and utterly non-descript as engines of universal destruction went.

He rolled up his pant leg and slipped the slim jim from where he'd lodged it in the side of his boot. There was nothing particularly challenging about the car and he was in it a moment later. He thought it was only his imagination that made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle, as though he was already being exposed to something with a half-life.

There was a garage-door opener lying on the passenger seat, as if the car belonged there. Mark didn't push it yet. The wire cutters were out, and, working in the shadows beneath the dashboard, he had the engine turning over a few seconds later, and then the door opening a moment after that.

_There you go,_ some small, long-dormant part of his mind said,_ if it weren't a nine-year old-Olds, this would have been a profitable morning. _

No matter _what_ happened, the judge was never going to hear that thought spoken out loud. This lead to a brief, stomach-churning, mental digression on the subject of finger removal, and by then he was out on the street, slowly rolling by the rental sedan, and on his way.

_Yup, like a bicycle._ And now all he had to do was meander westward, in a law-abiding fashion, back over to 27, and down to the PCH. He could be home in twenty-five minutes, hand the vehicle over to Patterson, and be sitting down to a cup of coffee and a piece of fruitcake within the hour.

_Except_ . . .

There was an almighty itch between his shoulder blades that was equal parts mistrust and curiosity, and maybe even an early effect of whatever goddamn stuff was in the trunk. He only knew one person with ready access to a Geiger counter—a Geiger-_Muller_ counter, he corrected himself automatically.

He turned east, toward the 405.

00000

He'd seen Paul Hanley occasionally the past two years, now and then, in passing at the university, though the physics department was a long way from the school of law, so their paths crossed only infrequently. Paul and his guardian, Stephan Mlotkowski, had spent a few months 'on the lam', as the Professor had put it, in a charmingly professorial Polish accent, after their last encounter with Patterson. That one had involved eight pounds of plutonium and two Russian arms dealers.

But since then, as far as Mark knew, their lives had settled down into something more routine. Mlotkowski had gone back to being a professor emeritus in the physics departments, and Paul had returned to his unofficial status as resident boy genius.

It occurred to Mark, as he pulled off at the exit nearest to campus, that he hadn't seen Paul at all the past six months or so, but he hadn't heard anything from Hardcastle about it, and he was the kid's lawyer, as well as Mlotkowski's.

Too late for a phone call, he took his chances. Right now he'd settle for either Paul _or_ the professor, though involving Mlotkowski would make it far more likely that Hardcastle, too, would have to be in the loop.

Mlotkowski had a home at the edge of campus, with a detached garage of its own. Mark pulled up to the curb in front. The garage door was open, and he could see a hood open, and Paul himself leaning over the innards of the ancient Ford truck. The kid looked up as he approached and flashed a smile. He'd put on another couple of inches in height—he was almost eye-to-eye with Mark himself—but no weight whatsoever, and was now in the throes of gangly adolescence.

"Good timing," the smile had become a grin. "Maybe you could take a look at this camshaft."

"Is it drivable?" Mark asked abruptly. "I mean, a few feet, just out of the garage?"

Paul had caught the seriousness of his tone and was looking past him, out toward the curb where the Olds was parked.

"Um, yeah. If it won't start, we can always push it that far," he admitted, as he let the hood down and slammed it, wiping his hands off on his pants and climbing into the cab. It turned over reluctantly, and Paul eased it into gear with a hopeful look on his face. He smiled broadly as he edged it down the drive. "See," he announced as he rolled slowly past McCormick, "I've got it running pretty good." It sputtered and died. Paul's shoulders visibly slumped with an inaudible sigh, but he coasted it down to the street and took it in a smooth curve out to the opposite curb.

He climbed out and met Mark at the sidewalk. "Anyway, it still needs a little work." He looked eager to change the subject. "So why do you need the garage?"

"You still have a Geiger counter?" Mark hooked his thumb at the Cutlass.

"Geiger—"

"_Muller_ counter. Yeah, I know. You have one?"

"Yeah, gimme a sec. Pull it in." He eyed the Olds a little warily and gave it some berth as he walked up to the house.

Mark had just gotten it into the garage when he returned. McCormick joined him at the back end of the vehicle and watched as Paul unclipped the wand from the top and turned the device on. He heard the familiar steady, individual clicks that he knew the younger man would call background radiation.

Paul started making slow sweeps over the edges of the trunk's hood. "We looking for anything in particular?" he asked casually, after a few swipes showed no dramatic increase in the click rate. "Doesn't look like the car is hot."

"Well," McCormick sighed, "it may still be that, even if it's not radioactive."

Paul frowned at him. "You _stole_ it?"

"Repossessed."

"But," Paul looked at him in quizzical confusion, "you're in law school. Why the hell are you doing repossessions?"

"Special request. Remember that guy Patterson?"

"_The_ Patterson? The guy that tried to have me arrested?"

"Yeah," Mark said, gradually aware of how strange this was all going to sound. "Well, he sort of saved my life six months ago. There was some nerve gas, see . . . and you know he's really . . ." he found himself choking on the words 'not such a bad guy.' He finally settled for, "not a total nut case."

The look on Paul's face was one of total disbelief.

"You stole a car for _Patterson_?"

Paul looked down at the trunk and took another cautious step back.

"Well, he said it probably wasn't radioactive."

"What _did_ he say it was?"

McCormick frowned. It sounded a little crazy now. "He said . . . well," Mark tried to decide if there was any better way of putting it, then finally settled for straight up. "He said that if it fell into the wrong hands, it would be the end of civilization—"

"Civilization?" Paul looked at him dubiously. "The whole shebang? Not just greater L.A., or maybe the West Coast?" He looked down at the trunk again. "You know, that would take a lot of doing. Couldn't be plutonium. Anyway, if you had a trunk-full, you'd need a better suspension than this thing's got." He kicked a tire thoughtfully.

"He sounded serious," Mark said. "And, yeah, I'll grant you he's a little paranoid, but I think that's because maybe people usually _are_ out to get him. So," he crossed his arms and studied the trunk, "if it's not plutonium, what the hell could it be?"

Paul gave that a moment's thought. "Maybe a biological—in which case, it must be securely contained. They wouldn't have just shoved it in there. So let's open it up and see."

"He said to bring it to him. He said specifically not to open the trunk."

"Did he say what it was?" Paul asked curiously.

"No," Mark shook his head, "he said he didn't know."

"And you trust him? You're just going to hand it over to him without knowing what it is?"

"Whatever it is," Mark said, "you're right, it has to be sealed up."

"Either that, or we're already dead, so we might as well take a look," Paul said.

He'd spoken with a degree of complacency and scientific curiosity that Mark found somewhat disturbing. But the kid was right. To hand it over unknowing, to a guy like Patterson, that would be an act of faith that McCormick didn't think he was quite capable of. He had his hand in his hip pocket, and the leather case out, before he'd even fully grasped his own intentions.

Paul was leaning over his shoulder with curiosity that wasn't exactly scientific anymore.

"You go over there," Mark said firmly, pointing back toward the house. "It could be booby-trapped."

Paul looked a little disgusted, but did as he was told.

Mark took a heavy wrench off the work bench and a spool of twine from among the gardening implements. He fastened the one to the end of the other and set both on top of the trunk. The lock took only a few moments more, and he winced when he heard it pop almost before he was ready.

He eased it open the necessary inch, to disengage the latch. He stepped back, unspooling the twine as he went, until he had twenty-five feet between himself and the vehicle. Then he reeled it in taut and gave it a final sharp tug. The wrench fell free with a clatter and the lid swung open in silent anticlimax.

Mark let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Paul joined him from his watching post, looking slightly disappointed. They both approached the garage, still cautiously. Mark gave Paul a little shove back behind him as they got close.

He leaned over.

"So, what _is_ it?" Paul was nudging him. "Come on."

"A box of papers." Mark let him slip around to the side. "Don't _touch_," he added sharply as the kid reached forward for the other thing that was tucked in the corner of the box.

Then he reached out and touched it himself. He picked it up and held it carefully, though it looked like nothing more that a mason jar, tightly sealed and containing perhaps a quarter cup of fine gray powder.

"What is it?" he said, carrying it to where the light was better. It still looked like gray powder. The jar was not labeled.

"Galen Lloyd," Paul said quietly. "I've heard of him."

Mark turned around suddenly. Paul had already pulled a notebook from the top of the box.

"Everyone thought he was hot stuff back in the fifties—the boy wonder of physics." There was nothing ironic in the way Paul said it. He was still thumbing quickly through the notes. "They say he went kind of flaky." Again, the tone was flat, without a hint that Paul's own mother was floridly schizophrenic.

"So," Mark asked tentatively, "does it say what's in the jar?"

Paul looked up from the notebook and flashed him a glance. "Come on, Mark, there's thousands of pages here and very little punctuation. Gimme a couple minutes." He turned, with his nose buried back in the page, and wandered in the direction of the house. "The professor knows him, at least _of_ him. He's talked about him."

"Is Mlotkowski home?" Mark asked, as he tucked the jar back in the corner of the box and hefted the whole thing out onto the edge of the trunk, then lifted it, following Paul.

"Not yet," the kid said absently, holding the door open for him. "Up and to the right. Just put it on the dining room table. Later. He'll be back this afternoon.

Mark trudged up the half-flight to the first floor, balancing the box. He deposited it as instructed. Paul had already pulled a chair out from the table and he seated himself, the notebook still in front of him.

"Well?" Mark asked, trying not to sound impatient.

Paul seemed to be coming back from a little further down this time. He looked up slowly and blinked once.

"You said a couple of minutes," Mark added apologetically.

"I think I meant that metaphorically," Paul replied. "Anyway, it physics, at least some of it is. A lot of it's just gibberish."

"Maybe the professor—"

"No," Paul said firmly, "I don't mean _I_ don't understand it, I mean there's nothing _to_ understand." He shook his head slowly. "There's bits and snatches here, though. Real stuff. It'll take some time to pull it together. Maybe you'd wanna go watch some TV?" He nodded hopefully toward the living room.

Mark checked his watch. "I probably should be getting back to Patterson. He's gonna be wondering where I am."

Paul looked a little alarmed. "You aren't going to take this back to him, are you?"

"Well," Mark looked down at the box, frowning, "he is the guy who was sent to look for it. Maybe he'll know what the hell to do with it all."

"But you said he didn't even know what it _was_." Paul's voice rose to a higher register. "You're going to trust him with it now?"

"Paul," Mark said calmly, "I don't think he's actually _malicious_, you know, just kind of, I dunno . . . creepy."

Paul was looking at him in disbelief.

"He didn't actually arrest you," Mark added in a tone of conciliation.

The kid let out a long breath. "Okay," he said, "maybe not. But last year I applied to some of the accelerator facilities. I had cooked up a research proposal. Mlotkowski said it was first rate. Really. And he doesn't say stuff like that just to be nice. Every one of them turned me down. I think maybe it was a clearance issue. I think Patterson had something to do with it." Paul sat there frowning.

Mark hesitated a moment, then finally cocked his head and asked, "You don't think maybe it might have had something to do with your being, what, fifteen then?"

Paul was biting his lower lip, practically chewing on it. "Dunno," he finally said. "The professor thought maybe it might have been a problem." There was a long, slow breath and then, "I sound kinda paranoid, huh?"

Mark shrugged.

"Yeah," Paul sighed, "I do. I worry about that. You know. And then I worry that maybe I worry too much, and that might be a sign, too. I just hope to hell that somebody will tell me when I start to lose it. I'd hate to be the last to know." He shook his head a quirked a smile that had very little humor in it.

"Paul—"

"It's familial. You know that, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," Mark said quietly. "Lots of things are, but that doesn't mean they're inevitable."

"Well, maybe not, but the whole whiz kid thing, she was like that too, and child prodigies have a pretty high burn-out rate. Look at Galen Lloyd." He lifted the notebook in one hand and let it drop. "Trust me; you're better off being a late bloomer."

Mark managed a wan smile.

Paul shook his head and closed the notebook. "Okay," he said, "I have these mood swings. I'll be okay. It passes."

"Well," McCormick grinned, "I hope you're not chalking that up to some sort of major psych issue. That's exactly how _I_ remember sixteen."

"Yeah, but sometimes I think you're crazier than I am," Paul flashed a quick grin, then, just as suddenly, his demeanor changed. "Please," he said with absolute seriousness, "just give me one day with this stuff. If anybody can make sense out of it, it'll be me. _Please_?"

Mark rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Take him the damn jar," Paul said, "just leave me the papers. They'll be safe; no one will know they're here."

"Okay," Mark finally said, "might help, I suppose, if you can make some sense out of it." He picked up the jar and gave it a light shake, watching the powder heap itself to one side of the bottom. "Dust to dust," he said quietly. "I'll call you later, or you call me, if you figure it out." He reached for a pen and dug in his pocket for a piece of paper, wrote out his number and handed it to Paul.

00000

Somehow, he wasn't quite able to shake the itchy feeling on the back of his neck on the way home, even though he now knew, beyond a doubt, that there was nothing in the trunk anymore besides the mysterious mason jar. As he drove up the PCH, he started to feel a mild twinge of relief. _Let Patterson deal with it._ For all he knew, the government had a whole mason jar disposal facility somewhere out there in Area 51.

He was so distracted by this thought, that he turned up the drive to Gulls Way and was all the way to the fountain before he noticed the light was on in the den window. He looked down at his watch and swallowed hard, but, by the time he looked up again, the front door was opening.

There was nothing to do now but tough it out. He hoped Patterson was up to giving some more detailed explanations. He hoped a piece of fruitcake might help. He parked the car and got out, attempting a smile.

The judge was already on the steps, coming down.

"Where'd ya get that?" He looked at the Olds in puzzlement.

"Ah, Encino," Mark said pleasantly.

**Chapter 3—Brief Moments of Dangerous Lucidity**

McCormick thought he'd have to give Hardcastle credit. He didn't even blink at that answer, just stood his ground and waited patiently for the real explanation. Mark, on the other hand, congratulated himself for not having screeched, 'What the hell are you doing home a whole day early?' That sort of thing might have been interpreted as an admission of guilt.

Instead, he kept his expression bland as he said, "Maybe we should step over to the gatehouse for a minute, Judge, and we can explain the whole thing."

"'We'?" Hardcastle asked, as he followed the younger man's gesture, still glancing over his shoulder at the Olds. "Who's the 'we'?"

"Patterson . . . and me," Mark said flatly.

Hardcastle came to a full stop on the walkway up to the gatehouse, turning toward Mark with an astonished expression.

"Patterson_ . . . here_?"

"Yeah," Mark nodded, and got one hand under the other man's elbow, ushering him forward again.

The judge balked a little.

"Here_, why_?"

"He needed a little help, something in the car repossession line." Mark ducked his chin toward the Olds.

"You stole a car for _Patterson_?"

"No, _repossessed_," Mark said staunchly. "His very own words. And if you can't believe Patterson, who can you believe?"

They were at the door of the Gatehouse and Mark used his key in the lock, stepping in and announcing himself, just in case the man was armed.

No answer. No one on the couch.

Hardcastle was right behind him, squinting into the dimly lit room with a puzzled expression on his face. Mark took the stairs to the loft, two at a time. No one in the bed, either. He made a quick and increasingly anxious inspection of the other rooms, even the patio.

"He was here," he said, trying not to sound like he didn't believe it himself. "_Really_." Mark sat down heavily on the couch. "Right here."

"Then he left," Hardcastle said calmly.

"You don't believe me."

"Of course I believe you," the judge answered. "Patterson came and asked you to steal a car for him; then he disappeared before you could get back with it . . . It _has_ to be true. You're a better liar than that."

"Thanks," Mark looked around him desolately, "I think."

"Did he happen to tell you _why_ he wanted you to steal the car?"

Mark frowned. "I think you better sit down for the rest of this." He pointed at the chair.

Hardcastle paused for a moment, looking thoughtful. As he sat, he asked, "Is it because it's a long story, or is it because I'm not going to like it?"

"Both, probably," Mark said worriedly, as he launched himself into the tale of eight-and-a-half-fingered Patterson, and the engine of doom.

00000

Hardcastle thought he deserved a lot of credit. He'd listened to all of it—even the part where McCormick had forcibly entered a garage in Encino and removed a vehicle—without much more than a studied frown. And he knew it had to be God's honest truth; nobody would make up a version that was quite that damning.

The story did not so much end, as wind down, with longer, more worried pauses between the last few details—dropping off the box of papers with his ever-willing partner in mayhem, Paul Hanley.

"And you left them there with him?" the judge finally asked, still calmly. He could tell that this quieter tone was worrying McCormick more than outright shouting would have.

"Yeah," the younger man admitted. "Just the papers. The jar is in the trunk."

Hardcastle let his frown travel over the main room of the gatehouse. "And you said Patterson was injured?"

"Yeah," Mark's expression of puzzlement increased. He was on his feet again, sticking his head back into the bathroom, and even taking a look in the wastebaskets. "There was blood. I used a lot of towels." He turned slowly and stared back at the coffee table; all that was left was the fruitcake.

"And now there's no evidence at all that he was ever here." Hardcastle shook his head. "I think maybe you've been set up."

"Wait a sec, there was a piece of paper," he scrabbled in his pants pocket. "He wrote the directions down . . . _dammit, _with his left hand. It looked like a first-grader'd done it." The scrabbling slowed and stopped. "And I wrote my phone number on the back of it and gave it to Paul."

The he brightened again, momentarily, and dug into his other pocket. "The rental car, Patterson's. Here," he liberated the key ring. "I left it up in Encino. There's some blood on the key chain." He held it up.

"'Was'." the judge studied it closely. "Well, maybe the lab can pick something up off it. If we even want to admit you have it in your possession. Might be interesting to see who rented the car. I'd be surprised if it was anybody with any visible connection to Patterson." He sighed. "And it's probably been reported stolen, too."

Mark sank back down on the couch, obviously considering the implications of not being told he needed to turn himself in at once. And, just as obviously, they were not good.

"This isn't going to be just stealing a car," he said with the dawning of anxious awareness.

"I'd say if it's a set up, it'll probably be more than that," Hardcastle said soberly.

"Somebody's dead out there, huh?"

"Well," Hardcastle nodded, "You already knew _that_. You said Patterson admitted he'd left some dead guys behind when he escaped."

"Yeah," Mark replied slowly, "but he also left some pieces of _him_ behind. It had to be a bloody mess. I don't think he was in any condition to cover that up." he looked around him one more time at the room. "You know, much as I hate to say this, I don't think this was Patterson's doing. I mean, I think someone took him."

Hardcastle gave that some thought. "Yeah, it's a possibility. Not sure if that helps us much."

"_Judge_, a guy may've been kidnapped here."

"We've got no proof of that," the judge said wearily. "In fact all we've got, so far, is the fact that you spent the morning committing a couple of felonies up in Encino. Now, you tell me how much of this we want to talk to Frank about." There was a moment of silence.

"Okay," Hardcastle continued, "maybe you better show me the car. No registration, nothing in the glove compartment?"

"I checked, no."

"Patterson," he muttered as he got to his feet. "I thought you hated the guy. It's gotta be some kinda weird reflex with you and cars."

All this got him was a quiet, regretful sigh.

00000

He approached the trunk of the Olds with even less alacrity then the last time. It didn't always make him nervous to have Hardcastle watch while he picked a lock, but this was one of those times he wished he could make it look like more of a challenge.

He was well aware that the man was standing, just behind his right side, with his arms crossed and a look of weary resignation on his face. But there wasn't much use in prolonging the agony. He went to it with the efficiency of repetition.

The jar was where he'd left it, tucked into an indentation next to the passenger-side wheel well and held in place by the spare tire.

He picked it up and held it out for the judge's inspection.

"Whaddaya think?" Mark asked.

He got a squint and a shrug. Then Hardcastle's gaze wandered right, and he was leaning in a little over the trunk, shading his eyes. "What's that? He pointed toward the back. "Next to the jack."

Mark frowned and put the jar down, then reached further into the shadowy recesses of the trunk, snagging it.

"A videotape," he announced, as he pulled it out. It was unmarked except for a date—October 23rd, 1987. He handed it to Hardcastle with a shrug of his own.

Hardcastle gave it one quick look, then said, "Put your toys away, stick this car in the garage, and let's go see Paul." He looked back down in the trunk. "And bring the damn jar."

00000

Mark did the driving—careful, sober, 'I'd really rather not get pulled over by a cop' driving—while Hardcastle held the jar and the tape. The door to Mlotkowski's garage was still open, and the old Ford truck was still on the curb across the street, but another car was in the drive and, as they pulled up, Mlotkowski himself appeared in the front door.

"I was about to give you a call," he said, his voice kept low, his expression tight, as they approached the front steps. He gestured them in without saying anything else.

He was frowning at Hardcastle or, more precisely, at the jar, and he pointed toward an end table in the front room. "There," he said. "Carefully."

The judge deposited it and then held out the tape. "Found this in the trunk, too. Got a player?"

Mlotkowski nodded once. They heard Paul's voice from the dining room. "Here's some more of the structure," followed by a rather more subdued, "_oh_," which had an ominous underlay to it. The professor gestured them forward again.

The contents of the box had expanded to fill the space allotted to them, table-wise, in groupings, piles, stacks. And amid them, both elbows on the table, pencil and yellow legal pad to hand, was Paul himself, his expression a strange amalgamation of curiosity and dread.

"There's got to be something wrong with this reproduction coefficient—the doubling time . . . maybe a decimal point." He leafed back through the pages of the pad, then shook his head once and handed the whole thing to Mlotkowski. "But I don't think so."

The professor tucked the tape under his arm and took the pad, frowning down.

"Well, if we're not dealing with a biologic system here," he said quietly. "None of the usual constraints." Then he handed it back. "October 23rd, this year. Anything?"

Paul reflected his frown for a moment, then reached toward one of the larger stacks. "October, mid to late. He was writing a lot about the B phase. Some of it makes sense."

"One of his brief periods of dangerous lucidity." Mlotkowski handed the tape down to Paul.

"From the trunk," Mark added, as Paul shot him a questioning glance.

Paul pushed his chair back and was on his feet, leading the contingent back into the front room again. The player sat, blinking 12:00, dusty and neglected, on a shelf beneath a portable TV. He knelt, turned the TV on, and slid the tape into place.

A moment of black and white clutter, then an image, going in and out of focus, as someone apparently adjusted the camera's settings. Paul sat back on his heels to give the others space to see the picture. The sound was just some things being moved about, no voice-over to accompany the image. Gray powder, a close up shot, then a gradual pull back to show that it was heaped inside of a small glass-walled chamber—a modified aquarium, perhaps?

The amount was smaller than that in the jar on the table, a teaspoon at most. Some motion off to the right, now they could see that the chamber had an entranceway off to that side, connected to a long tube. It had the look of elaborate precaution, designed to prevent things within from getting out.

In the tube was a mouse, alive, whiskers a-twitch with caution, moving in the way that mice do—lots of sniffing and not much linear progress. The hand of the unseen photographer had entered the picture, obviously activating the control that opened the door between the tube and the chamber.

The mouse seemed to sense the new possibilities and moved, with hesitant uncertainty, in that direction.

"Look," Mlotkowski said, a little hushed.

Paul nodded. "It's transitioning to phase B. There must have been water vapor in the smaller chamber."

Mark saw it now, too, the gray powder had begun to darken, taking on a semi-liquid, iridescent black appearance, beading up off the surface where it lay. The mouse wandered into the new space, staying prudently alongside the wall.

It might have been the visible tension in Paul's shoulders that set Mark on edge. The mouse seemed perfectly oblivious, moving to its own internal mouse purposes, and suddenly deciding that it needed to be on the other side of the chamber.

The mouse darted. A corresponding movement of the air within the chamber, and a ripple appeared across the surface of the small black mound. Along one edge, the bead flattened and spread, the rivulet intersecting the tip of the creature's tail as it passed by.

For a moment, it appeared to be only a splash of black, a spot, nothing more, but clearly the animal was disturbed. It jumped, and turned as if to grasp at it. The movement was not even completed before the black had begun to spread, with the distal-most part of the tail now more resembling the slime than the mouse.

The creature made a half-leap. The black had now extended up to its rump, and one hind leg was enveloped. A staggering step and it was down, on its side, its back half slippery, glistening for a moment before crumpling in on itself. Still no sound, but the ragged last few breaths must have been noisy inside of the sealed chamber. One final convulsive movement of the head, and that, too, was involved—ears, eyes, nose, and whiskers, nothing recognizably mouse anymore, beyond a temporarily mouse-shaped mound of black slime that rapidly resumed more anonymous contours.

The picture cut off abruptly, replaced again by snow and hiss. Paul reached forward and turned off the TV, then he looked back over his shoulder at the professor.

"The decimal point was right," he said quietly.

"What the hell _was_ that?" Hardcastle asked abruptly, casting a sideward, worried glance at the jar on the end table.

Paul turned and re-sat himself on the floor, now facing them. He said nothing. Mlotkowski rubbed the bridge of his nose and shook his head, and gestured the other two men to the sofa. Hardcastle sat with apparent reluctance, moving a few feet in, away from the end table.

"Don't worry," the professor smiled thinly. "That appears to be the A phase, relatively inert as long as it is stored in a zero humidity environment. That," he pointed vaguely toward the now-blank TV screen, "is what happens when the substance is exposed to water, very little water, only as much as might be found in ordinary humid atmospheric conditions. That is B phase." Mlotkowski sighed. "It is very active."

"It's . . . corrosive?" Hardcastle asked.

"No, not in the usual sense," Mlotkowski said. "It is a molecule which is designed to use organic substrates to replicate itself. The mouse _became_ B phase."

"That fast?" the judge asked disbelievingly.

Mlotkowski cast a look at Paul as if to say, 'Where will we start?'

Paul made a vague gesture with his hand, which probably meant something like 'Keep it simple.'

The professor sighed and said, "It's an illusion, really, the little heap of dust. It's just that we humans have trouble thinking at the near-atomic level."

"The number of demons that can dance on the head of a pin," Paul muttered softly, "is inversely related to the size of the demons."

It had the sound of an old family joke. Mlotkowski gave it a quick nod before he continued. "In this case the demons have an atomic weight of, what, Paul?"

"About six-thousand."

Another nod. "We haven't quite worked out the structure. It is slightly different, obviously, in the anhydrous A phase. Galen's notes are maddeningly vague at points."

"What the heck was he _trying_ to do?" Hardcastle asked with rising irritation.

"Make diamonds . . . I think," Paul said. "It's kind of hard to tell. I think it started out that way. He wanted to assemble them from the ground up, atom by atom. Perfect diamonds, created at low pressure."

Mark frowned. "But if you could do that, then they wouldn't be worth anything, would they? I mean, they'd be as common as sand."

Paul shrugged. "They wouldn't be status symbols anymore, but they've got lots of industrial applications, and what he was after was perfect little diamonds, just a few dozen carbon atoms across, to act as sort of ball bearings for other machines, that would be only a few hundred atoms larger."

"Instead he got _this_?" Hardcastle pointed towards the jar.

Paul nodded sadly and glanced at Mark. "I told you he's flakey."

"'_Flaky_'?" Mlotkowski snorted. "The man is certifiably insane." He turned back to the two men sitting on the couch. "I'm not sure you've had a chance to grasp the full implications." This got him only a quick, encouraging shake of Hardcastle's head before he continued. "B phase activity is very dramatic, I will grant you. It is the work of millions of Galen's little machines, creating billions of themselves each second, perfect replications as long as water molecules and substrate are available. Almost any organic material would do, even non-biologic sources of carbon, although the process might be slower. It is geometric, of course, and geometric processes tend to be quite astonishing in what they can accomplish.

"But, as you saw, the B phase machines are relatively immobile, they stay where they're put. The substrate must come to them, and, apparently, Galen thinks they won't do much with silica-based surfaces."

"I think he's right about that," Paul interjected. "The structure's wrong."

"This is not a situation in which _any_ margin of error is acceptable," Mlotkowski shot back with harsh impatience. Paul subsided, elbows on knees. The professor sighed again, as if he was trying to find his place in the lecture.

"The other phase," Mark said quietly. "The dust."

"Yes," Mlotkowski took another breath. "The A phase. Inert, but . . . mobile, very much so at the near-atomic level, easily batted about as individual 'machines'. An air current, a breath. Do you see what I am saying?

"If you opened that jar, in a fairly dry environment, the dispersal, my God. And if you inhaled just one," Mlotkowski frowned, very grim. "Not as dramatic as the mouse. Geometrics can have very innocuous origins. One machine, settled deep in the airway, perhaps all the way into the lung tissue itself, moisture, substrate, it becomes two, the two create four. Seconds pass, an area of slime the size of a pin head. It's really a millions of machines, reproducing themselves, a few minutes go by, a cough. It might take a while for the organism to notice it is under siege, but it wouldn't matter. There would be no defense anyway."

"No way to destroy it?" the judge frowned doubtfully.

"Oh, certainly that," Mlotkowski admitted. "Heat—break the bonds between the atoms. Paul?"

"A hundred degrees centigrade," Paul nodded. "That would take it back to A phase, at least temporarily, probably need another hundred to irreversibly deactivate it."

"You see," Mlotkowski turned back to the other two, "now you are faced with the difficult choices. The person who inhales just one of these machines, is as doomed as that mouse. No way to eliminate it, short of parboiling the lungs. Destruction from within, he would be dead long before the visible corruption reached the surface, but before _that_ there would probably be a few convulsive coughs, a death rattle."

"Which would spread the machines back out again," Hardcastle said with quiet dawning horror.

"Immolation would work," the professor added grimly, "if it was done quickly, before the symptoms became apparent."

"Hazmat suits and flame-throwers. That would be the only way to deal with it?" Mark asked.

"I doubt that protective clothing would be of any benefit," Mlotkowski said somberly.

"People would panic. It's invisible." Hardcastle reached for the bridge of his nose "It would be anarchy." He shook his head once, then looked up at Mlotkowski. "We need to get moving on this. _Damn_. I'm going to need you to explain this to some people."

"Frank?" Mark asked.

"To start, I think." Hardcastle nodded. "We're gonna have to get 'em over the hump, first. It's kind of a lot to digest." He was looking back at the jar with an expression that was more than worried.

"It's been sitting there for a half an hour," Paul pointed out, "and none of us have turned into black slime. Looks like it's contained, to me."

"Just don't knock it on the floor," the judge said, with a hint of exasperation. Then he turned to Mlotkowski. "The phone?"

The professor adjourned them both to the other room.

**Chapter 4—A Temporary State of Uncertainty**

Mark watched them depart, then moved a foot further down the sofa, away from the end table. Paul stifled a snort and McCormick shot him a quick, sharp look.

"_That's_ not the stuff you have to worry about," Paul shrugged at the jar. "It's the rest of Galen's stock, if there is any, and wherever it is. Hell, it may all be over already." He cast a glance in the direction of the front window, as if he half expected to see the slime encroaching on the tree out in the parkway.

Mark frowned, but said nothing.

Paul let out a wistful sigh. "I'd kinda hoped I'd have a chance to get laid at least once, before Armageddon."

Mark couldn't help it, he let out a snort of his own, and then, "Okay, that's it. I don't want to hear any more from you about not being normal."

"Yeah, well, I _was_ the one who figured it all out." He shook his head. "What does it mean when a guy's a total whack case and you get what he's doing right off the bat?" Then Paul segued ruefully, "But when they need somebody to talk to the authorities, they grab the guy with the silver hair and the beard."

"Trust me," Mark said, "it's gonna be an uphill battle even for the professor and Hardcastle. That's why he's starting with Frank."

"Hah, well, it took me a while to convince Mlotkowski. There's a whole lot of perfectly good reasons why none of this should work. You guys missed the big blowout argument about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle . . . but I guess Lloyd's mouse trumps Schrödinger's cat."

Paul ran his fingers through his hair and then leaned over to get to his feet.

"I ought to get back at it. They'll want to know more about the structure."

Mark looked through the doorway at the piles of papers. "I think they'll settle for a general outline. You know, the video's damn convincing."

"Okay," Paul shrugged as he stood, "then let's just say _I_ want to know more about the structure . . . it's really pretty amazing." His shrug slithered into a shudder and the rest was added in a grim aside, "Patterson was right this time. It could be the end . . . really."

00000

Hardcastle and the professor had retreated into Mlotkowski's study, and taken up seats across the desk from each other. The judge had given his approach only a few minutes thought before convincing himself that Mark's first instinct had been the right one. Frank would listen, Frank wouldn't ask too many questions—at least not right away—and, most important, if Hardcastle said it was bad, he'd _believe_.

He took the phone and dialed Harper's office, but, for once, the lieutenant wasn't working on a Saturday. He hung up and tried the equally familiar home number. After five rings he got Claudia. Frank wasn't there, either—out running errands; she expected him back soon.

The judge kept it flat, very calm; he was starting to feel the warm itch of paranoia that he'd begun to associate with any dealings involving Patterson. Suddenly he didn't want to be discussing anything over the phone.

"Can you just ask him to drop by Professor Mlotkowski's place? He knows where it is. I'll explain everything to him . . . no, Claudia, everyone's fine. I just need to show him something. Tell him it's important."

He got out of the conversation as gently as possible; he sometimes wondered why Claudia was even still on speaking terms with him, all things considered. He hung the phone up and heaved a sigh.

Mlotkowski had his elbows on the desk, with his chin cupped in the heel of one hand. "Now we wait?" the professor asked.

Hardcastle nodded. "If it's out, it's out. There won't be much that can be done, huh? And if it's not, the panic would be worse than the threat." He shook his head and half-murmured, "Once people figure out it can be eliminated by fire . . ."

There were a few moments of tense silence.

Mlotkowski finally lifted his eyes. "You know I didn't believe him, not at first."

"Well, I had a moment or two of doubt on my end, too," Hardcastle smiled grimly.

"I would have looked at those papers and seen . . . nothing, nothing that made any sense." Mlotkowski clasped his hands together on the desk and let out a deep breath. "I've known it for a while now . . . though it was mostly in a theoretical way."

"What?"

"That he has the spark. True genius, not merely a prodigy." Mlotkowski smiled ruefully. "There are days I'm not sure who is learning from whom . . . but I think that state of uncertainty is merely temporary."

The judge frowned and sat silently for a while. Finally he let out a long sigh of his own.

"I asked Mark why the hell he did what he did. I still don't get it—he _hates_ Patterson—but if he hadn't left when he did, and gone and gotten that car, he would have been there when _they_ came."

"Who are 'they'?" Mlotkowski asked.

"Wish I knew," Hardcastle replied, then he shook his head again, "but, whoever they are, they would've gotten him, too, along with Patterson, and then the Olds, and the papers, and the jar . . . He's got good instincts sometimes," he added, with a tone that bordered on surprise. "It's a good thing he doesn't listen to me _all_ the time."

00000

"Schrödinger's cat," Mark said, half to himself while fiddling with a stack of papers, "that's the one in the box with the cyanide, right?"

Paul nodded absently without looking up from the notebook he was studying.

"And it's half-dead and half-alive, right?"

"No," Paul looked up impatiently. "It's entirely alive, and entirely dead, at the same time. That's the paradox that's occurring at the atomic level. Is the particle decayed, or isn't it? There's no way to be certain." There was a considering pause and then he shook his head once. "I think physics was kind of wasted on you."

Mark frowned and shrugged. "I remember feeling sort of sorry for the cat."

Paul's sigh was audible. "It's a _metaphor_, dammit. Would you feel better if it was Schrödinger's cockroach?"

Mark cast one glance over his shoulder, in the direction of the front room—the end table, the jar. "What the hell would somebody want with it?" he said, with a note of complete mystification. "What would be the _point_?" he added quietly. "I don't get it."

Paul was still looking at him, when Mark turned back. He had one finger down on the page, marking his place and a strange expression on his face.

"It's power." Paul's expression had turned into a frown.

"Not if you destroy everything by using it," Mark retorted. "What the hell kind of power is that?"

"It's the ultimate power," Paul said, with no apparent irony. "Total destruction . . . though I'll admit it's not very useful." He cocked his head back down at the page.

Mark stared at him. The depths were damn disconcerting. Paul seemed to sense he'd made a misstep. He sighed again.

"Okay. It's not very useful as _is_. But, oh man, if we _could_ control it. Turn it on and off at will, make it do what we wanted."

"You mean other than turn things into black slime?"

"_Yeah_," Paul said with an irritated edge to his voice. "As a technique, a method of manipulating matter, it's amazing. It's DNA from scratch. It's fixing cells from the inside out, making things from the atom up."

"It's jackrabbits in Australia."

"Don't be a Luddite, Mark. Besides, you can't _unknow_ things. Galen Lloyd figured this out, so can someone else . . . maybe someone who won't make a complete hash job of it. If it was done right, it could change _everything_."

"But not this week, I hope." Mark edged back from the table and cast one more look at the jar. After a long moment, he added, "If this turns out okay, I swear to God I'll never steal another car as long as I live."

"You said you repossessed it."

Mark winced. "The jury's still out on that one."

"Well," Paul said philosophically, "I wouldn't worry too much about it. No one'll care _what_ you did, once Southern California starts turning back into the La Brea tar pits."

00000

Frank pulled up to the curb behind Milt's truck and studied the situation with a fair amount of grim trepidation. An ivy-covered house in a quiet neighborhood, and Frank was on the short list of people who knew there'd once been a small thermonuclear device in the basement, and that crystal sharp memory added a certain intensity to the message Claudia had delivered.

If Milt had something he needed to show him here, chances were he wouldn't be making it home for dinner.

He took a deep breath and climbed out of his car, firm in his conviction that ignoring these things never made them go away. He walked up to the porch and rang the bell. It didn't surprise him to see Mark opening the door.

"Hi, Frank." The younger man looked a little subdued, maybe a tad worried. But Mark was hard to read in these situations; subdued could mean anything from transmission trouble with the Coyote, up to the end of civilization as we know it.

"So, what's going on?" Frank asked.

"Maybe you better come in." He gestured him through into the front room. "Don't touch that jar." He pointed to the end table.

Frank gave it a quick glance, and then took in Paul's barely acknowledging wave through the door to the dining room. The kid was hunched over some papers, scribbling notes on a pad next to him.

He heard familiar voices approaching down the hall.

Milt and Stephan Mlotkowski were deep in conversation. Now they looked conciliatory, nervously accommodating, toward their new guest. This was maybe the most worrisome sign so far.

"Maybe the tape first?" Milt asked the professor.

Mlotkowski shook his head. "Some background, just a little, I think."

"Maybe," Hardcastle replied doubtfully, and then, to Frank, "Maybe you ought to sit down . . . No," he grabbed for an elbow and steered him to the far and of the couch, away from the end table, "how about here?"

"Is this," Frank started to sit, "because it's a long story, or because I'm not going to like what I hear?"

"Both," Milt said, very sincerely. "There's this guy, see, his name is Galen Lloyd. Those are his papers." Milt gestured with his chin toward Paul's piles, "and this is his jar." He was looking toward the one on the end table, with distaste evident in his expression.

Frank blinked once.

"He seems to have been doing some very worrisome research," Mlotkowski jumped into the story. "Quite dangerous, it appears."

"The jar?" Frank asked dryly.

Two nods from two men. Frank shot a quick glance at Mark—he was maintaining a look of preternatural detachment, which meant this was almost undoubtedly his doing.

"How dangerous?" Frank sighed.

"End of the world, global-scale disaster dangerous," Milt replied tersely. "Listen, Professor, I think we need to just roll the tape. We're going to need to get going on this. Frank," he turned back to Harper again, looking very intent, "we'll give you the background as we go, but you're going to need to get some kind of response team together to deal with this Lloyd guy. Mlotkowski says he's got a place up north."

"Way up, hell and gone, past Barstow?" Frank asked quietly.

Milt and Mlotkowski both froze where they stood.

"Yes," Mlotkowski finally replied. "Up in the desert. You know of him?" he asked doubtfully.

"You guys haven't been listening to the radio, huh?"

He was met with blank stares all around. Milt managed a shake of the head and a grim, "What happened?"

"It was on the news this morning. Fire, suspicious origins. Desert home of a guy named Galen Lloyd—Nobel Prize nominee or crackpot, depending on which talking head you listen to."

"Well, there's your dead body, Judge," Mark said resignedly.

Milt ignored the interruption; his eyes were on Frank. "How bad a fire?"

"Accelerants are suspected. The place is a total."

"A body?"

"Well, the Mojave Desert's not my jurisdiction, Milt. I wasn't reading a report, just listening to the news while I ran some errands."

"_Was_ there a body?" the judge asked more insistently.

Frank shrugged. "Sounded like they'd be using dental records."

Milt turned to the professor, still looking very intent. "Whaddaya think? Burnt to the ground, dental records? Is that enough?"

"Enough for what?" Frank interjected.

"If it were done _in time, _buta dog, a cat, a rat, a flea," Mlotkowski shook his head worriedly. "One machine and a few grams of substrate, escaped into the desert. It might not go far before it died, but then the desiccation. The particles might lie dormant for a long time, or get carried off on a breeze, once they're dehydrated back into A phase. I'm not sure I would be comfortable without a wider zone of destruction."

"Destruction?" Frank frowned. "What the hell are you guys talking about?"

"China Lake is pretty handy," Milt was musing. "They've got the firepower."

"You want to call an _air strike_ on an arson scene?" Frank asked in flummoxed disbelief. "What the _hell _was going on up there?"

"Dammit, McCormick, show him the tape."

**Chapter 5—It's Just Starting to Get Interesting**

Frank watched. This time the voice-over was provided by Mlotkowski, while Hardcastle stood quietly to the side, his expression settling even grimmer. Mark stepped back into the dining room; he didn't really feel like he needed a second viewing. Paul was still leafing through one of the notebooks, stopping every so often to scribble some apparently essential thing onto the pad alongside. He hadn't even looked up when the tape started.

Not oblivious, though, he nodded every once in a while, along with one of the more salient points being made by the professor. The tape ran its course; the mouse succumbed yet again. The lecture went on over the quiet hiss of the unrecorded tape.

Mark sat down at the table again, out of the way. The lecture evolved into a conversation, more of an interrogation, really. Frank had a lifetime of experience extracting facts from people mostly less organized than the professor, and a surprising willingness to suspend disbelief when Hardcastle asked him to. It wasn't more than fifteen minutes before Harper was on his feet, requesting a phone.

Mlotkowski ushered the other two into the back room. The judge emerged after only a few minutes. Mark looked up at him questioningly.

"I had him run the plate on the Olds," he said, almost apologetically.

Mark nodded.

"We needed any information we can get," Hardcastle frowned. "It was Lloyd's. The Encino address belonged to his mother, recently deceased."

Mark nodded again. "Does Frank know that I—?"

"He's not asking." The judged waved this away abruptly. "Not yet, anyway. We've got bigger fish to fry. He's trying to get word to the San Bernardino County authorities that they may have a hazmat situation up there. That'll do to start, we hope.

"Then he's gotta get the Encino people to cordon off that house. That'll be a harder sell—potential crime scene, more hazmat stuff. Sooner or later we're going to have to start getting down to brass tacks about what's going on." He shook his head doubtfully. "Might take more than a mouse and Mlotkowski."

This got an off-handed 'hmph' from Paul, who still wasn't looking up from his work. Then Frank and the professor reemerged from the back.

"Got an appointment in one hour with the Commissioner, best I could do," Frank said.

"Does he know I'm involved?" Hardcastle asked.

"No helping that," Frank shrugged.

The judge grimaced and cast a quick glance at the professor. "I'm not on his Christmas card list," he shrugged apologetically, "neither is McCormick."

Mlotkowski took a split-second to process the vernacular and then smiled wanly.

"Only a fool would refuse to put down an old feud in the face of a greater danger." Then he looked toward Paul and the papers. "We'll need these."

"Everything?" Paul asked, a little plaintively. "Or just the essentials?"

"All of it, I think." The professor frowned as though he was considering asking for the notepad as well. The slight shake of his head that followed confirmed it, along with an impression that, sadly belated, Mlotkowski realized that taking it would do no good. When it came to not being able to _unknow_ things, Paul had been speaking from personal experience.

Paul stood slowly and sighed, then began packing the papers back into the box, a little haphazardly and with much reluctance. Mark started to lend a hand but was waved off. He wandered back into the front room, trailing after Mlotkowski.

Hardcastle was sitting, edged forward in the chair, staring at the jar with a look of loathing. Frank was standing nearby, with his brow furrowed into a deep and near-permanent frown.

"I dunno," the judge said quietly, obviously the answer to a question from Frank. "I'm not sure there'll be anywhere that _is_ any safer." He'd glanced up at the lieutenant. "But it wouldn't hurt to have her go down to her mother's. That's San Diego, right?"

Frank nodded, then let his chin sink down, his hands deep in his pockets.

"Look," Hardcastle was still speaking in a low voice, very calm, "I asked you to get involved with this; you're in a room with the damn stuff, and you didn't even blink. I think it's only fair that if you're going to be in the middle of this, then you shouldn't have to be worrying about her. And, besides, she'll go if you say go, and she won't ask why if you say you can't tell her."

This got a quick, sharp, snort of disbelief from the lieutenant.

"Well," Hardcastle sighed, "she won't ask _too_ much."

"She'll worry about me."

"Yeah, well," the judge shrugged, "she's not stupid. She probably worries every time I give you a call." There was a short pause and then, "Just talk to her, Frank, _please_."

Another nod from Harper, and then he edged past the others toward the hallway.

"But try to keep it vague," Hardcastle added in admonition. Frank nodded one last time, and was gone.

The judge let out a heavy sigh and his shoulders sank down. "We'll be ready in a minute," he said to the professor. Then he shot Mark a sharp glance. "You stay here with Paul, okay?"

Mark knew it was only being perfunctorily phrased as a question. He nodded.

"What about that?" He pointed at the jar.

The grim look got marginally grimmer. "I suppose we'll have to leave it here. Can't trot it all over town. It's a glass jar, for Pete's sake. One slip and the Commissioner's office could be ground zero." He rubbed his forehead and then, "I'll leave you the gun. It's in the glove compartment . . . not that'll do much good if someone is determined."

"Not much beyond the two bullets I save for me and Paul if that stuff gets out of the jar," Mark said, with no sense of hyperbole whatsoever.

00000

The papers were gathered, and Frank had returned from the professor's office, looking very sober. At a glance from Hardcastle he gave a slight shrug and a half-smile.

"She says you and she are gonna have a little talk when this is over . . . but she didn't ask too many questions."

Mark watched them pack up and move toward the door. He'd accepted the gun from Hardcastle a few moments earlier, along with a series of general and specific cautions that were capped of with an all-purpose, "Just be _careful_, will ya, just this once?"

He'd nodded. He'd really meant it, too. With an absolutely clear conscience he could have at that moment said he fully intended to sit tight, with Paul, and baby-sit that jar for the rest of the weekend if necessary.

But the man he was trying to reassure still looked very concerned.

"And keep _him_ out of trouble, too," Hardcastle added quietly, gesturing with a covert jerk of the chin toward the dining room, where Paul was sitting in contemplative innocence.

"Absolutely," Mark said firmly.

And then the three of them were gone.

Mark stood at the front window and watched them pull away in Frank's car. He let out a heavy sigh, only to startle a bit as he heard it matched by one from Paul, who'd moved up silently behind him.

He frowned over his shoulder at the kid.

"Yeah, well," Paul said, "I'm worried, too. All we've got to deal with is the damn stuff in the jar. They're going off to do battle with _Bureaucracy_." His expression wasn't very sardonic. "And you'll notice who got left behind. I'm a real liability when it comes to being taken seriously . . . It's all right, though. I've got work to do."

Mark felt his eyebrows going up as Paul moved back into the dining room and opened a drawer in the hutch. He pulled out his notepad, and the notebook he'd been pouring over a short while earlier.

"_Paul_."

The kid shrugged. "He didn't ask for _my_ notes," there was a touch of injured pride in that, "and he didn't _miss_ the notebook . . . and, besides, I'm not done with it. It's just starting to get interesting."

Mark glanced back at the front window, and the empty spot where Frank's car had been a moment ago.

"It might _help_," Paul insisted. "Better I should be reading it, than them dropping it in some official's lap, a guy who probably went straight through four years in the polysci department with maybe nine credit hours in science and all of that 'science for the scientifically illiterate'. 'Political science'," he muttered, "what an oxymoron."

"When did you get so bitter?" Mark asked, as he strolled toward the dining room table and slumped back down into his chair.

"I'm tired of it," Paul snapped back. "Tired of being treated like a kid, tired of nobody trusting my judgment." He looked up from the notebook and fixed McCormick with a pointed look. "How the hell do _you_ put up with it?"

Mark blinked once. "Ah . . ." a pause and then a thoughtful look, "probably because my own judgment's gotten me into a fair amount of trouble over the years. Maybe that's it. I dunno." He flashed a cockeyed grin, meant to be appeasing. "Yours, too, come to think of it."

Paul just scowled. "It's always, 'Pawel, be patient, Pawel listen." He shook his head and stared back down at the notebook. Then in a lower voice, almost inaudible, "I'm _smarter_ than he is." Paul's head ducked down even further, as though he'd said something he hadn't intended to say.

Mark considered ignoring it. Then he leaned forward a little, both arms on the table. "Look, Paul," his own voice was low and very reasonable, "it's not about intelligence all the time. I mean, that's all well and good, but there's other stuff." He frowned for a moment in thought. "Wisdom. That's different, right? I mean, it's intelligence _and_ experience. You can be off the charts and still you can only get as much experience as life hands you." He sat back a little. "Sometimes I wish I could give some of _mine_ back, but, hey, you need it, you need a lot of it, and if you know somebody who's older, who's been through it before, and they try to give you a clue, maybe you _should_ just listen to them once in a while."

Paul had lifted his head again. "You mean I ought to listen to _you_?"

"Hell, no," Mark laughed. "Well, maybe about this. And cars. Paul, that truck is toast. It'll always _be_ toast. It's dead and it's not worth fixing. There. Now, I've said it." He grinned again, but then the grin flattened abruptly. "What I mean is, you ought to listen to Mlotkowski. Hell, you may be smarter than him, I dunno, but he's gotta be running you a close second. And he's _been_ there."

"Maybe," Paul said reluctantly, and with a little edge of guilt to it. "It's just that sometimes I get so frustrated."

00000

Things had gotten quiet in the car. Mlotkowski shared the back seat with the box of papers. He pawed through them desultatorily and frowned to himself, then went back to sorting a little more diligently.

Frank and the judge shared the front, with the lieutenant driving silently for the first few miles. They were approaching the downtown area when he finally broached the question.

"Is Lloyd's Olds back at Gulls Way?"

He got a silent nod.

"Did it get there in the usual way?" Frank asked cautiously.

"Yeah," Hardcastle replied, after a moment's thought, "I'd have to say that's about right."

Frank let out a long breath and shook his head. "You got any particular reason why he went and did it this time?"

Milt's sigh matched Frank's own for length and sincerity.

"Patterson," he finally said. "You remember Patterson?"

Frank nodded.

"He showed up this morning and _asked_ McCormick to do it." Hardcastle shook his head in persistent disbelief. "Then he up and disappeared. Poof. A frame, a kidnapping, _both_ . . .who knows?"

Frank's eyebrows rose a notch but he kept his face forward and his eyes on the road.

"And, well," Milt half shrugged, "I'm hoping when this is all over, everyone is going to be so relieved that the ways and means are gonna just fade into the background."

"You wish," Frank said abruptly. "This is the Commissioner we're talking about here."

"Yeah," the judge sighed again. "Well, maybe we aren't gonna even have to worry about it at all."

00000

Over the preceding fifteen minutes, Paul had given up reading and gone to all scribbling, a couple of sketches that looked like something off a chemistry class blackboard, some hmming, and a little rhythmic kicking of the table leg. Two lines were erased and replaced, followed by an 'Ah-hah.'

"See," he finally said, holding out the notepad with the other pages folded over.

McCormick looked down at the figure and then up again, just as blankly.

"Come on, Mark, a Luddite like you oughta know there's more than one way to wreck an engine than taking a bat to it."

Mark searched for something and finally said, "The 'B's are new, aren't they?"

"Yup," Paul said cheerfully. "Sugar in the gas tank. Grit in the seventeen jewel movement. It's boron, and it doesn't quite fit. I was thinking maybe silica, you know, in place of the carbon, but it's so wrong that the machines would just ignore it. That's why the glass jar seems to work pretty good for containment. But give me a few grams of elemental boron, fine mesh sieved, and I think we've got a fighting chance against A phase."

"How good a fight; how much of a chance?" Mark said flatly.

"Pretty good." Paul looked down at his drawing again. "_Very_ good, I'd say. But maybe I'd keep a flame thrower handy, just in case."

"And where the hell do you get boron?"

Paul smiled brightly. "The chemistry department."

There was a pause.

"Of course the building isn't open on a Saturday afternoon," Paul added. "Which is a good thing, since they'd probably ask a lot of questions if I asked them to lend me some boron."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Well, in rocket fuel it is, but not in Silly Putty."

"I suppose Silly Putty won't work."

"Nope," Paul wrinkled his forehead, "not pure enough. But in the chemistry building—"

"Which is locked."

"—I'm sure we can find some."

"I don't have my stuff. Left my picks back at the estate. Hardcase said put 'em away and, well, the ice was a little thin back there this morning, you know—"

"It's okay," Paul was already on his feet, "I've got a set." He left Mark sitting, mouth slightly ajar, and was back in only a few seconds. "I think I've got a handle on raking, but I could use some pointers on the picks. Sometimes I just can't get it. Maybe I'm putting too much force on the torque wrench."

Mark closed his mouth and shook his head. "Hardcase'll kill me."

"Okay, then _you_ do it." Paul tossed the case down on the table. "You stole a _car_ for Patterson, for crissake, all I'm asking for is a little boron."

McCormick frowned, looked down at the drawing then up at Paul again. "What kind of locks are we talking about here?"

"Medecos."

Mark winced.

"But there's a ground-level service door in the back where they haven't gotten around to remodeling. It's an old Yale."

Mark gave a hard stare into the face of innocent scientific curiosity, then he slowly got to his feet. "Whadda we do with the jar in the meantime?"

Paul cocked his head. "The basement, there's already a lot of jars down there."

Mark had one last, brief attack of common sense as he headed into the front room. "Why don't we just call the Commissioner's office? Have Hardcastle call us when he gets there."

"We could be in and out of the chem building by then, and if you do hang around here, and then try to notify them, what even makes you think they'll believe me?—not to mention, they'll send someone back for the notebook. I _need_ the notebook, Mark."

McCormick looked over his shoulder, studying him for a moment, then gave an uncertain nod of acquiescence as he picked up the jar.

**Chapter 6—A Nobel Prize in Larceny**

The lecture started in the Commissioner's office, then adjourned to a conference room, where there was a TV with a VCR player. The audience enlarged to include a couple of deputy commissioners and the head of Public Safety. The mouse died two more times.

The guy from public safety had taken a minor in chemistry and said something about the effects of thermal energy on molecular structure. Mlotkowski digressed dangerously for a few moments into some esoterica about tight bonds and small forces but, right about then, Frank jumped in and said, "You wanna watch that tape one more time or are we going to get moving on this?"

And slowly, ever so slowly, like the geometric process it was, things started to happen.

00000

McCormick had to admit, Paul had chosen his point of entry well. The service door was four steps down from ground level with a bush between them and the street. Mark avoided crouching down, a sure giveaway to anyone passing by that someone was up to no good. Paul leaned against the cement retaining wall casually, though the expression on his face was one of avid attention to detail. His initial offer to 'give it a try' had been brusquely refused, but it hadn't made any apparent dent in his enthusiasm.

"Feynman used to do this," Paul said, "for fun."

"Fine-who?" Mark had abandoned the rake and was substituting a diamond point.

"Feyn_man_, won a Nobel Prize."

"I didn't think they had a Nobel Prize in larceny."

"I dunno," Paul gave a quick grin that slid into a grimace, "wonder what Rosalind Franklin woulda said about that."

"Rosalind who?"

"Yeah, okay, but don't tell me you didn't know who Feynman is. I _told_ you about him."

"Yeah, quarks—top, bottom, strange." Mark felt the last pin lift and snick into place, and the plug start to turn. He smiled. "But I'd lost a lot of blood that afternoon and none of it made any sense. Thank God it wasn't on the final." He gave a quick glance over his shoulder at Hardcastle's truck, parked on the otherwise empty street behind him just in case they needed to make a getaway, then he opened the door and ushered Paul in. "Where?" He glanced down the dim hall, relieved to find no security cameras.

"Up two flights." Paul pointed toward the stairwell. "Probably one more locked door."

00000

The audience was getting larger, but the guy from Public Safety had found a kindred spirit in one of the hazmat team coordinators. The two of them had raised enough questions and objections to temporarily sidetrack any actions beyond the hazy notification of the other jurisdictions involved.

Hardcastle finally stalked out into the hallway, with Harper not far behind him. The lieutenant found him scrubbing his hand over his face and then standing there, cupping his chin in his hand and shaking his head slowly.

"Well," Frank said with bitter resignation, "might be too late already, who knows?"

"Maybe so, maybe," Milt turned and looked at Frank. "But if it isn't, this is death by bickering. I never thought I'd get to the point where I'd agree with McCormick on this, but if we go on playing by the rules, it could be the end of . . . _everything_."

"Yeah," Frank nodded his agreement, then looked over his shoulder back at the now-crowded room, "but what else can we do?"

"I dunno," Hardcastle replied, "but I'm gonna give 'em another fifteen minutes to get their rears in gear, and if they don't then I'm hauling out of here. Gonna go back and get McCormick and . . ."

"Then what?" Frank asked curiously.

"Not sure, exactly," Milt conceded. "I guess we'll figure that out as we go along." He paused for a moment, appearing lost in thought, then he added, "And don't mention to him what I said about not following the rules, okay?"

This got a half grin from Frank. Then his expression sobered quickly. "You know, Milt, if this goes the way Mlotkowski is saying, I don't think you're gonna have to worry much about Mark finding out."

00000

The lock on the door to the supply room was a Medeco, and Mark tackled it with grim resolution and every anticipation of failure. This time Paul seemed to sense the tension and kept his mouth shut.

"I'm giving it fifteen minutes," Mark announced quietly, about five unsuccessful minutes into the procedure, "then we call it quits and go find a phone and call Hardcastle. You can convince him, I'll bet, and if you don't wave the notebook around under his nose, he'll even ignore that. Just don't, for God's sake, tell him about _this._" He hesitated a moment, and then added,"But anyway, we're gonna have to call him."

A moment later he was rewarded with the first pin sliding up and into place.

"Or maybe not."

00000

Men in suits began to arrive—men who wore suits routinely, even on Saturday, being more convenient, Hardcastle supposed, for the carrying of concealed weapons. He'd half-hoped to see Patterson among them. He didn't think the loss of a finger or two would keep the man sidelined for long.

No Patterson, and the judge didn't think this was quite the time to raise the issue of his whereabouts. Still, the appearance of federal employees raised both his hopes and his curiosity enough to get him to head back inside the conference room.

He'd missed the introductions, which apparently were limited to the Commissioner, Mlotkowski, and the senior-most fed. He was in time, though, to see it rapidly going downhill from there, without an ounce of visible collegial cooperation. Two of the guys in suits already had physical control of the box. A third one had noticed the VCR and was popping the tape out.

Besides Frank, there were only three other representatives of the LAPD in the room—desk-jockeys all.

"I want some answers," the Commissioner started to protest. Box and suits moved door-wards, unopposed.

Hardcastle was still in the doorway, silently seconding the motion.

The senior suit wasn't smiling. "Everything," he said tersely, "is under control. This is evidence in an ongoing federal investigation."

One of the other feds now had Mlotkowski by the elbow. No one inside the room was raising much protest; a few looked almost relieved.

Hardcastle wasn't budging. "And him?" He gestured toward the professor, but his gaze never left the senior fed's face. "You got some kind of warrant? _Anything_ at all?"

The man's eyes shifted right, to his colleague who had taken Mlotkowski under tow. There was a nearly imperceptible shake of his head, and the other man detached himself from the professor's arm, without comment or change in expression. Hardcastle stepped back, nearly treading on Frank, who'd moved up behind him.

"That's it?" Frank asked. "They walk out of here with everything?"

The feds were already in the hallway, and behind them, in the room, a half-dozen disgruntled discussions were breaking out.

"Well," Hardcastle shrugged as the elevator door at the end of the corridor closed behind the departing men, "I'd say they've pretty much thrown a monkey wrench into the chain of evidence. If we can get 'em to stop by the estate and pick up the damn Olds the same way, we'll have McCormick off the hook."

"But what about—"

"The hell with that." Milt interrupted with a quick impatient gesture in the direction of the elevator. "They've got the papers, but we've still got the guys who understand them." Then, suddenly, his face went a shade paler. He looked up sharply at the professor, who'd joined them in the hallway. "Dammit, they know about you now; your place will be their next stop."

He glanced down at his watch, then strode off in the direction of the Commissioner's office, stepping into the deserted antechamber and over to the secretary's desk, the other two close behind him.

"Call home," he instructed Mlotkowski, pushing the phone in his direction.

He dialed; they waited. Moments passed.

"No answer," Mlotkowki said anxiously, holding the receiver out.

00000

"How much is this stuff an ounce?" Mark watched Paul climb the ladder and reach down a small canister.

"You mean a gram?" Paul asked.

"Okay," Mark shrugged, "go all technical on me. A _gram_."

"A couple bucks, maybe two-fifty," Paul said casually, "a gram."

Mark ducked his chin for a moment, then lifted it. "How much is in there?"

Paul hefted the canister a moment and looked thoughtful. "Maybe half a kilo—five hundred grams."

Mark paled. "A thousand bucks worth?" He glanced over his shoulder. "No wonder they've got the good locks." Then he dragged his eyes back to Paul, who had dismounted the ladder. "How much do you need? I mean, you're not going to take all of it, are you?"

"Well," Paul looked at him puzzledly, "we went through an awful lot of work to get in here. I mean, wouldn't it be stupid to come up a couple of grams short?"

"But how much will you _need_?" Mark asked, a little more insistently.

"Um," Paul looked down at his prize. "Stoichiometrically speaking? Ah, about 1:1200, so, um, a gram could neutralize about a kilo and a quarter of the slime, assuming perfect dispersal . . . though I'm kind of hoping for a containment effect—if we can create a crust of inactivity on the surface. Won't know till we give it a try," he added, with more enthusiasm that was completely rational, in Mark's opinion.

He rubbed his right temple, "Listen, Paul, sounds like if we need much more than a couple hundred grams, we're gonna be in pretty deep, right?"

This got a small shrug, a semi-return to reality.

"Okay, so," Mark wheedled gently, "maybe you could just take what we need, maybe a little _less_ than two hundred grams?"

Paul looked down at the canister and then up at McCormick, "_Why_?"

McCormick winced. "Well, see, so far we've got second degree burglary, and, if we can keep this under four hundred dollars, then it's petty theft. But trust me, it starts to add up."

Paul looked at him absolutely blankly for a few seconds. Then he took a deep breath. "Look, Mark," he said very patiently. "It's already burglary _and_ grand theft auto, up in Encino, plus there'll be suspicion of murder, and arson. Really, I don't think you have to worry about the extra three hundred grams." He handed him the entire canister.

"S'pose not," Mark said grimly as he took it. "Now what?"

Paul appeared to shake himself free from a moment of thought. He said slowly, "Maybe we should try to call them. You know," he looked pensively out the window of the storeroom, across campus in the direction of home, "try to figure out where they went, make sure they're okay."

"Tell 'em we've been staying busy," Mark added dryly.

"Maybe not _that_." Paul gave him a quick grin that held for just a moment before turning back to pensive. "But I'd kinda like to call them anyway."

00000

"If there'd been an incident; if shots had been fired, right on the edge of campus like that," Frank said quietly, almost to himself, "then the word would have been sent up to the Commissioner right away."

"A kidnapping," Hardcastle frowned grimly. "Quiet."

Mlotkowski sat in the backseat, looking alarmed.

"You think Mark would go quietly?" Frank asked.

"Just himself," Milt shook his head, "not likely. But with Paul there . . ."

"Maybe," Frank nodded.

"Or," Mlotkowski leaned forward from the backseat, cutting into the conversation. Hardcastle cast a quick look back, almost in surprise, as though he'd managed to have almost forgotten about the other passenger.

"Or, what?" the judge asked.

"Well," the professor looked half-hopeful, half-worried, "one of the notebooks was missing. I believe it is the one Pawel was studying right before we left."

Hardcastle reached for the bridge of his nose and pinched hard. "Which means—?"

"If Pawel kept it behind," Mlotkowski edged forward a little—the 'if' seemed a bit disingenuous, but Hardcastle was not really feeling like his own team was on the high moral ground so far that day—"then it might mean he thought he was close to something, that he thought there was something else to be done."

"But wouldn't he _call_ us?" Hardcastle asked impatiently, fully aware that the correct pronoun ought to be 'they' and the answer was 'not necessarily'.

00000

Mark had gotten as far as the last turn onto Mlotkowski's street before he realized something was not right. There were two vans, nondescript but governmental in their own unmarked way. One sat squarely in the driveway, the other on the curb, directly in front of the house. Frank's sedan was not in sight. There was a guy in a suit, standing over by the old Ford, and at least three more on the front lawn. Mark didn't risk a further head count, straightening the wheels and moving smoothly through the intersection, as though he'd never had any intention of turning.

Paul was looking over his shoulder, trying to catch a last glimpse of whatever was going on. He turned back to the front a moment later, letting out a deep breath.

"Bad guys?" he asked.

"Feds, I'm pretty sure," Mark replied.

Paul looked at him as if he hadn't answered the question.

"Well, I think they're just regular feds . . . don't know exactly which _flavor_," he added.

"Yeah, but are they _bad_ guys?" Paul repeated impatiently.

"Who knows?" Mark said with a rising note of exasperation. "Patterson wasn't even sure and he _works_ with them. Besides, you've got a thousand dollars worth of stolen boron in your lap and I'm carrying a set of lock picks. Even if they _aren't_ bad guys, we can't go over and introduce ourselves." He shook his head. "So, _now_ what?"

"Well," Paul said quietly, after another moment and a further block had passed. "There might be something else we could do."

**Chapter 7—More Like an Escapade than an Abduction**

Hardcastle saw it all in one glance—the two vans, their besuited passengers already out surveying the scene, and the absence of his own truck. There was an instant rush of aggravation and relief. He couldn't easily fit the missing truck into a kidnapping scenario, but in all other regards it boded for trouble.

"Maybe they were heading downtown to meet up with us," Frank suggested, obviously trying to put the best spin on what they'd both seen.

Hardcastle 'harrumphed'. Mlotkowski just sat tensely silent. Frank pulled in at the curb in front of van number one.

The senior fed had made it as far as the front porch, and had apparently already rung the bell. He turned to face the new arrivals, looking stern.

Hardcastle went point, managing a politely neutral expression and a calm tone. "Got a warrant yet?

"It'll be arriving shortly," the fed informed him. "Might want to save us all some time and just consent to it." He'd shifted his gaze to the professor, but was obviously still addressing Hardcastle.

"How's it going to read?" the judge asked curiously. "What'll you be looking for?"

The fed frowned a little, as though he was trying to think of a reason not to say. Failing that, he answered tersely, "Illegal or restricted substances of a hazardous nature. Any additional papers relating to the manufacture or use of such substances. Anything which is the property of Galen Lloyd, deceased."

"'Substances', huh?" Hardcastle gave him a sympathetic look. "How you gonna know when you've found 'em? Did they _brief_ you guys about what you're up against here?"

There was a moment of what Hardcastle considered to be informative silence.

"Yeah, I kinda thought not," the judge finally answered for him.

He stepped up onto the porch; it was an old-fashioned, wrap-around sort, with a few pieces of wicker furniture bracketing the front window. He stepped past the window itself, casting a long look inside and seeing no movement. The end table was in shadow along the side wall, but he couldn't see the jar, either. He let out a sigh, which might have been interpreted as further sympathy for the beleaguered government worker he was dealing with. He gestured the man to one of the chairs.

"Might as well get comfortable while we wait," he smiled. "I'm Milton Hardcastle, judge, retired, state superior court. You've already met the professor, and that's Lieutenant Frank Harper, LAPD."

He got a tense nod from the fed.

"And you are?" he asked encouragingly.

"Walter Halpern," the fed answered brusquely, after a moment's more hesitation.

"F.B.I.?" Hardcastle prodded.

No answer.

"Bureau of Land Management?" the judge inquired patiently.

This got him a look of mystification and a puzzled 'no', and then finally, "What they hell jurisdiction do you think _they'd_ have in this? I'm with the Department of Commerce."

It was Hardcastle's turn to look puzzled.

"Patents Division," Halpern continued. "But this is a task force," he added vaguely as though that ought to make everything clear.

Hardcastle managed a slow, "Ahh." And then, "Don't suppose you know a guy named Patterson?"

There was no immediate reply, but a quick darted look from Halpern to his apparent second-in-command and then, "Mr. Patterson no longer works for the Department of Commerce."

To this Hardcastle nodded sagely. "I gathered he transfers a lot. You by any chance run into him today?"

Halpern shifted a little uneasily in his chair, clearly more interested but not saying anything to indicate it. "We are not aware of Mr. Patterson's whereabouts at this time." Then, after another apparently calculated pause, "Are you?"

Hardcastle smiled serenely and said, "Not a clue."

Another dark and nondescript sedan was pulling up. Two men stepped out, one of them was known to Hardcastle—Ed Obervetter, of the local F.B.I. office. He carried the papers and looked mildly irritated to be called out on a Saturday afternoon.

"You guys are really fast," Harper said with a touch of envy.

"Had a judge on standby," Halpern had allowed himself a small smile. He gave a quick nod to the newest arrivals and a jerk of his chin to Mlowkowski.

The warrant was duly presented. The professor looked down at it and then up at Hardcastle. The men over in the driveway had already opened the side door of the van. The box of papers could be seen inside, along with other crates of gear, some of which were being currently offloaded. Mlotkowski was studying the process thoughtfully.

Hardcastle caught the new direction of his gaze. He looked back at Halpern, who was on his feet now, waiting placidly next to the door.

"They _did_ brief you about this stuff?" Hardcastle asked, for the second time.

"Those protective suits," Mlotkowski mused. "They're using spun polymers now. Tyvek, I believe?" He paused, but he clearly wasn't waiting for an answer, merely thinking. Hardcastle cast him a questioning glance. "It's made of polyethylene," Mlotkowski explained. "Carbon and hydrogen, a polymer."

"_Oh_." Hardcastle said the one syllable heavily.

"Usually there's a layer of charcoal as well," Mlotkowski added.

"Oh, great," the judge added. "That'll just be dessert."

"Try not to think of them as biologics," Mlotkowski chastised gently. "They're _machines_; carbon is merely a substrate.

"Tell that to the mouse," Hardcastle said tersely. "Good thing this is just a dry run . . . I hope." He looked back in through the window. Then he turned back to Halpern abruptly. "Well, let's get on with it. If you _do_ see anything that meets your criteria for suspicious, for God's sake don't open it. And when you guys are done poking around, have 'em bring in that video tape. We're going to have us a little show and tell."

00000

"It's kind of like what might've happened if James Joyce had taken up experimental physics," Paul sighed. "A lot of symbolism, recurring themes. Who knows what the hell half of it means." He paused, looking up from the notebook. "I don't suppose you'd know where we could pick up a flame-thrower?"

"I just want to find a phone," Mark said, half to himself.

"Well, this first part won't be too dangerous," Paul consoled. "He mentions this guy, Beisterling, some kind of patent lawyer."

"How we gonna find him?"

Paul smiled. "I looked him up this morning. Whaddaya think first, office or home?"

"Saturday afternoon? Home, most likely."

Paul looked momentarily disappointed. Then he murmured, "I thought we might want to try where he _wasn't_, first."

Mark gave a quick, hard stare to the side. "_Home_," he repeated firmly.

Paul dropped his gaze back to the notebook without further comment.

00000

In the interests of efficiency, the professor had given a brief, explanation of what they were up against, and convinced Halpern that MOPP gear would be only a hindrance in this case. Surprisingly, he'd concurred, but his men looked increasingly edgy, and proceeded with visible caution.

Hardcastle led the way into the Mlotkowski home, making his own low-key survey as he went. It surprised him, how much relief he felt to find nothing appearing amiss. All the self-assurance he'd mustered on the front lawn wouldn't have held up much longer under the strain of uncertainty.

Not that things weren't still uncertain, but between the professor's observations and his own, this looked more like an escapade than an abduction.

Small comfort, that.

He smiled thinly at Halpern, who was starting to disarrange things with more vigor. So far his team had accumulated a small collection of 'objects of interest', some of which might indeed be classified as hazardous, and all of which had come from Paul's room, but none of which had anything to do with the matter at hand.

Hardcastle gave them another thirty minutes and then, sensing their rising frustration, grabbed Halpern by the elbow and steered him back to the front room.

"I think," he said, "maybe it's time we pooled our resources."

00000

It was an outlying residential section of the Santa Clarita Valley, upscale without being ostentatious, and lazily quiet on a Saturday afternoon. Though, technically, parking and looking were not illegal, Mark thought five minutes might be pushing his luck in this neighborhood. Long before that time limit was reached, he turned to Paul.

"Stay here."

The kid looked disappointed but not surprised.

Mark climbed out of the car, gloves and picks discreetly tucked into his pockets, and an unfelt confidence in his stance and walk. The front porch was in plain view of the street, and he had every intention of approaching and ringing the bell, like any upright citizen on legal business might do. The rest of the equipment was just in case.

He realized the door was very slightly ajar before he was even within reach of it. A dilemma. Walking in _after_ being seen ringing the bell would look plenty shifty to the neighbors, far worse then merely walking in. He raised his knuckles to the door at waist height and made the knock serve for opening it further, while pitching his voice low.

"Mr. Beisterling?"

No answer, and now the door stood well open—in or out, and only a moment to decide. He cast the quickest of glances over his shoulder. Paul was still sitting obediently in the truck. Mark slipped inside without touching the knob, and gently closed the door behind him with his heel. A moment after that, the gloves were on.

He didn't bother with the salutation again. He'd caught a whiff of something when the door had first swung inward. Most people would have thought 'somebody went away for the weekend and forgot they'd left a pound of hamburger on the counter,' but for McCormick it had different connotations altogether.

Nothing out of place in the foyer or living room. No signs of anything, just the uncanny odor, which was stronger as he moved into the hallway toward the back of the house. He found him on the kitchen floor, face down, no visible blood, but the obvious source of the odor.

"Smells, ah, gross."

He jumped at the sound, though he knew as soon as he heard it that it was only Paul. He turned abruptly and fastened him with a sharp look.

"You were supposed to stay in the truck."

But Paul was ignoring him; he'd caught sight of the body now, too. "Beisterling?" He asked in a more hushed tone.

"Probably," Mark replied grimly. "I'm not searching him." Then he gave kid another hard look. "What did you touch on the way in?"

"Just the door," Paul said defensively. "Honest. I had to; it latched when you closed it," he added with a little irritation. "His papers, where do you think—?" He'd already turned and started to step out of the kitchen.

"_Paul_." Mark was a half-second behind him and missed the grab for his arm by a small margin. "We need to get out of here. Wipe the door down and get out of here. Find a phone somewhere."

"He must've had files. That was what they were after I'll bet." Paul was keeping his hands in his pockets, but that was as far as obedient caution went.

"Whoever did _that_, took _them_," Mark said, now speaking to himself as Paul had disappeared around a corner into another room.

"But they left _this_." Paul's voice was a little muffled, but the chortle was barely concealed.

Mark had caught up, and peering into what was clearly an office, saw the kid already in the chair in front of the computer. "Dammit, Paul, _gloves._"

"Yeah," the kid replied ruefully; his hands were already on the keys, "I gotta start carrying a pair. Sorry." Then he brightened as he set to work. "But I am really good at these. Just gimme a sec."

Mark grimaced, and returned to his own survey. In this room there were obvious signs of a thorough search—file drawers open, files strewn about. Clearly they hadn't had to leave in a hurry; they'd probably found what they'd been looking for, whatever that was and whoever _they _were.

Another chortle from Paul. "Passwords, _hah_." He looked over his shoulder at Mark with a grin not at all appropriate to a murder scene. "Got it."

"Got what?"

"Appointments, his calendar. When and where he met Lloyd. There's another place, besides the one up past Barstow. Hey, it makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, even Galen must've realized the stuff was kind of wonky, and he was starting to get a little paranoid. Looks like he must've moved his research."

"So the place that burned, that wasn't his main lab?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Paul looked at the screen thoughtfully.

"Can you print all that out?"

A quick nod.

"Okay, two copies. We'll leave one. Here," he stripped off the gloves and handed them over to Paul. "Put these on before you handle the paper, and wipe everything down that you touched. Hold on a sec, I'll find you a rag or something."

"You know," Paul took the gloves, looking not very concerned, "_my_ prints aren't on file anywhere."

"Yeah," Mark agreed glumly as he turned back toward the kitchen, "but I think they're gonna be before the weekend is over."

"Nah," he heard Paul's voice, a little more subdued, "they'll thank us when it's over."

"Hah," Mark stepped around the body carefully, grabbed a dishrag off the sink, and walked back into the office. "I'll settle for probation, maybe community service."

"_I'll_ settle for someone being left to arrest us, when it's all over." Paul traded the rag for the first sheet. Mark looked down at it. Paul set to wiping down the keys as the second sheet printed. The kid said nothing more. When he'd run out of keys to swipe, he went to work on the chair and desk, still silent.

"All right," Mark said quietly, "We'll go take a look . . . _after _we find a phone." He looked down at the desk. "We'd better not call from here."

"Yeah, a phone." Paul nodded slowly, almost contritely. "And a couple of gallons of gasoline and a Bic lighter," he added more decisively.

McCormick looked at him dubiously.

"Well," Paul shrugged, "it can't _hurt_."

**Chapter 8—Temporary Insanity**

They found a gas station, got two gas cans and filled them, all the while trying to look like two guys who had a lot of lawn to mow. Mark hesitated over the simultaneous purchase of a lighter and a couple of glass bottles of juice, finally adding a pack of cigarettes, anything to avoid the appearance that he was going into the business of making Molotov cocktails.

The clerk looked utterly disinterested. Mark thought he might have asked for a case of empty bottles and some rags that already had oil on them, and gotten not even a raised eyebrow. Paul wandered up and added a bag of Cheetos and two Snickers bars.

"No lunch," he said with a shrug.

_True_, Mark thought, but he hadn't noticed. The clerk added in the gas and finished ringing them up. Mark stuck the pack of cigarettes and the lighter in his pocket and hefted the cans. Paul took the rest.

Paul ducked his chin in the direction of the phone. Mark gave him a quick shake of the head.

"Someplace where we haven't just purchased accelerants," he added, once they were outside.

00000

The mouse was damn effective, as always, and Hardcastle thought Mlotkowski's more detailed lecture had gone well. Of course he was hearing it for the third time and all made perfect sense to him by now. Halpern and Obervetter, sitting side by side on the couch, had gone from doubtful to perturbed, but still seemed to have reservations.

The rest of the troops were scattered in the two rooms, but everyone had seen the tape and the mood had gone very sober. Searching had ground to a halt.

"There was a jar here?" Halpern asked,

"Earlier, yes." Hardcastle had decided on absolute honesty. The stakes were too high. He'd already explained about Patterson's appearance, and disappearance, and Mark's misguided attempt at public service.

"And you have no idea where that jar might be now?"

"Still here. Most likely," the judge said with a slow, considering look around. "I think McCormick wouldn't have driven off with it unless he'd had to."

"All right," Halpern turned wearily back to his men. "We're gonna tear this place apart . . . very, _very_ gently."

The troops dispersed again, slowly, even more carefully this time. Just as Halpern turned back to Hardcastle, the phone rang. It was answered by someone in the back room, who then shouted forward for Lieutenant Harper.

Frank frowned and went to pick it up.

Obervetter rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, "I'm going to ask for an APB, state, and county authorities, L.A. and San Bernardino. I'll need the make and plates for your vehicle, Judge."

Halpern looked irritated, as though he resented the intrusion, but said nothing.

Hardcastle nodded reluctantly. "Just make sure everybody understands. These guys are on _our_ side, just a little _over-enthusiastic_, that's all."

Frank returned, frowning more deeply. He dropped his chin a moment and then lifted it. "Someone, anonymous, left a tip about a dead body in a house up in Saugus. The caller gave 'em my name, asked for me to be notified at the Commissioner's office."

"Not trying very hard at the anonymous part," Hardcastle muttered.

"But they didn't stick around for the cops to show up. They didn't even call from the scene. It was a pay phone between there and Palmdale."

Obervetter was frowning now, too. "Guess I better extend that up to Kern County, too."

Frank gave him a puzzled look, then continued, "The victim is a lawyer named Beisterling."

Halpern's second-in-command pulled out his notebook and thumbed through a few pages before announcing, "Beisterling—his name's on Lloyd's patent application."

"He's maybe two days dead, just a rough guess," Frank added. "Blunt head trauma.

Hardcastle hoped his exhalation of relief hadn't been noticeable. "Two days, huh?" Then he cast a quick look at Halpern. "Whaddaya say we split your task force, leave a couple of them here, the rest of us head up to Saugus?"

"'_Us_'?" Halpern said with irritation. Then, just as suddenly, seemed to realize that he might prefer having his interlopers where he could keep an eye on them. He sighed with resignation. "And how few you thinking I should leave here?"

"See?" the judge smiled. "You've already found a use for us. One, maybe two at the most. The hot trail's Saugus, and Frank here can requisition you a couple of LAPD guys to help out here. We've got a hazmat team coordinator and a guy from Public Safety that we're not real fond of." Hardcastle's smile broadened in a way that probably made Halpern at least a little glad that the judge hadn't so far included him on that list.

He made a quick nod of decision and turned to re-delegate his men

00000

Paul dug the map of California out of the glove compartment, and unfolded it in his lap, alternately consulting it, the print out, and the road signs. Mark drove, and considered every single apparently logical decision that he had made so far that day, each perfectly, _undeniably _logical in isolation, but which, cumulatively, had landed him on a remote rural road, with ten gallons of gasoline, and Paul for back-up.

That and a cold, shuddering sense of déjà vu.

"How much farther?" he asked.

Paul shook his head. "It's kinda vague. But you're gonna turn left at the next road. You want the other Snickers bar?" he offered placatingly.

Mark shook his head. "The last place we passed with a phone was about five miles back."

Paul nodded.

"If I tell you to, you'll take the truck and high-tail it back there and call 911, no arguments, okay?"

"What about the boron?"

"Screw the boron _and_ the picks," Mark said impatiently. "I'll plead temporary insanity." Then he frowned. "You do know how to drive, right?"

"Of course," Paul cast him a quick, disgusted, sideward glance. "I mean, theoretically, at least. It's not rocket science."

Mark sighed, gazing at the desolate surroundings. "At least there's not much you can run into out here."

Paul looked off to the right, at yet another dusty, little-traveled road that looked not much different than the others. "There it is," he announced with an assurance that seemed unmerited. "Turn here."

00000

The Santa Clarita police, and a wagon from the L.A. County Medical Examiner's office, had already drawn a few neighbors out onto the sidewalk. Hardcastle watched Halpern and his men move in with the same ruthless efficiency that they'd shown earlier in the commissioner's office.

He stood back a bit, with Frank at his elbow and Mlotkowski behind him.

Harper leaned in a little and spoke low. "Whaddaya think? We in a hot zone yet?"

"Nah," Hardcastle shook his head. "Doubt it. Right, Professor? For one thing, we still got a body."

Mlotkowski nodded. They watched as the body bag was carried out on a gurney, obviously containing something which was not amorphous.

Halpern emerged again, with a sheet of paper enclosed in an evidence bag. "They trashed the office," he said disgustedly.

"Not McCormick," Frank replied, before Hardcastle could even jump in. The judge shot him a quick, surprised look. Harper merely shrugged. "That's not his M.O."

"Well," Halpern conceded, "might've been the guys who knocked off the lawyer. Somebody left _this_ in the middle of the desk with a paper-weight on it." He held out the bag containing the single page. "Whose fingerprints am I gonna get off it, do you think?"

"Nobody's." It was Frank again, sounding very confident.

Hardcastle sighed heavily, not certain if this was exactly the character witness that McCormick needed, though it was all undoubtedly true.

"So, is it a red herring? Are they trying to throw us off their trail?" Halpern asked impatiently.

"I doubt it," Hardcastle replied quietly. "I think Paul has some kind of handle on this, and maybe neither one of them thinks you guys do, and that maybe the official response would be too late." He cast a long, slow gaze around them at the slowly accreting circus on the Beisterling's front lawn. "Can't say he's wrong there."

Then he sighed deeply again. "Look, they wanted to make sure they had back up, just in case. If this had been a red herring," he flicked one finger at the evidence bag in Halpern's hand, "they'd a probably already put in another call to the Santa Clarita Police to give us an 'all clear'. I think we need to get moving. Us. Now. It'll take too long to explain this to anyone else, if they'd even believe us. And if we send someone in without a clear notion of what they're dealing with, the results could be catastrophic."

Halpern looked down at the evidence bag and then up again sharply at the three men, as though he'd just made one of those decisions that he hoped he'd have a long time to regret.

"Okay," he asked with chagrin, "how many guys do I leave _here_?"

00000

Mark pulled the truck up at least a hundred yards from the buildings. All was silent. There was a van out front, paneled, but not the same make or model as the ones they'd seen earlier at Mlotkowski's. This one was rusted in spots, with some minor collision damage.

There was no way to make a concealed approach, though the sun was only an hour or so above the horizon. Didn't matter anyway; they'd almost undoubtedly already been spotted if there was anyone inside.

"How we supposed to do anything from back _here_?" Paul looked at him impatiently. "Can't we at least get a little closer?"

"Not both of us," Mark replied flatly. He'd watched long enough to get the notion that no one was coming through that door. He still wasn't entirely sure about the _why_ of it.

"The boron," he said abruptly, and he made a little motion with his right hand as he reached for the door handle with his other.

Paul handed the canister over reluctantly.

"Slide over," Mark went on, as he stepped out of the truck. There was a cool breeze off the desert, a smell of dust—the wind kicking up with the dropping temperature.

Paul slid behind the wheel.

"Keep the windows rolled up."

"That won't help—"

"Just do it," Mark said insistently. "Please? And stay here, okay? Just this once, will you listen to me?"

Paul frowned, and nodded once sharply.

"If I raise my hand, you get the hell out of here."

Another nod, this one even more reluctant.

"Go back, to the nearest phone, try to reach somebody who'll listen to you."

Mark closed the door and turned away, cradling the canister in the crook of his arm. He felt Paul's disapproving gaze on his back but he had no time to make that right. He had the strongest feeling that they'd run out of time altogether. He'd gotten a strange impression, staring at the larger of the two structures, at the front door—a shadow, perhaps a heat shimmer, but there wasn't enough warmth left in the day for that.

Whatever it was, it was _moving_.

00000

Frank watched Hardcastle maneuver the three of them into Halpern's van, and cadge the seat next to the senior fed for himself.

"_Quid pro quo_," the judge said abruptly, as they'd pulled out onto 58, "and I haven't gotten much quid for my quo. Who the hell is after this stuff and _why_?"

The agent had a permanently worried expression on his face, as if he was reviewing a series of perfectly logical decisions that had somehow landed him in a van with an ex-judge, a police lieutenant, and a retired professor, looking, most likely, at the end of civil service as he knew it.

Harper pondered the Hardcastle Effect, and had a brief tug of relief, in the midst of potential disaster, that he wasn't the only one susceptible to it.

"Can't hurt," Frank coaxed gently, "or at least not much more than it already has. Might as well clue us in."

Halpern turned to him, as if he'd momentarily forgotten there was anyone else in the car. "I think," he began slowly, "that we were all working with bad data."

00000

Mark saw his own shadow, stretching out across the ground in front of him, like a harbinger of what might be. He was at least halfway to the building now, close enough to make out more details. Cinderblock, he'd concluded, with a coat of aquamarine paint, flecking off in places from the probable occasional poundings it took from windblown sand. This afternoon, so far, it was merely a breeze.

The shadow at the foot of the door was clearly not a shadow—it was lying in the wrong direction, and was not flat. It had an eerily familiar contour; it was an oversized, but otherwise perfect copy of the one from the tape.

He stopped, twenty feet out, and looked at it, puddling under the edge of the door, curved slightly up under it, as though it had already begun to erode that as well. The porch itself was concrete, and impervious, but apparently not entirely level, and the edge of black was inching forward in quivering increments as the bottom of the wooden door was consumed.

When it got to the edge of the porch it would drip down onto the dirt—into it—seeping, unrecoverably, into the sand. He unfastened the lid to the canister and stepped forward cautiously, trying to rid himself of the notion that the black ooze was watching him.

He had a brief notion that he ought to have asked Paul a few more questions. _He said boron is harmless._ Of course Paul's notion of harmless did not run in tandem with most people's.

He reached into the canister, grabbed a handful of the stuff, and tossed it, underhand and a little sideways, like he was seeding grass at the estate. Too light, it scattered back on the wind. He grabbed another small handful, stepping closer, leaning nearly over the forward edge of the puddle, letting it drift down between his fingers, like gray snow, allowing a little leeway for the wind and prepared to jump back if he made the puddle _angry_.

There was a hiss, subtle at first, but slowly increasing to a coarse crackle. The surface of the puddle buckled and dimpled, lost its glister, and seemed to settle, like cold lava. The outer edge was no longer in motion, but the part nearer in, toward the door, was still rising, and would soon overflow it.

Mark stepped up onto the porch carefully, still strewing, now slightly more emboldened. Then his fingers hit the bottom of the canister.

He looked in and saw a few powdery dregs lingering in the corners. He looked down, considered the thickness of the layer that lay beneath whatever free boron remained on the surface, and hastily shook his head.

He poured out what little remained into the palm of his hand, tapping the canister to get at the last few grams. He distributed it at the edge of the door, hoping to slow the inevitable, but it was obvious that the rest of the puddle on the other side was still in business.

He stepped over to the front window cautiously to reconnoiter, giving a little nervous consideration to the layer of dust that was on the inside of the glass. There was a light on inside, and, even through the dirt, he could see the general outline of things.

Shelves along the far wall, equipment, containers, a table in the middle, atop that an object he was already familiar with. It still looked like some sort of glorified aquarium, dry, of course. Very dry, the small mound of black slime wasn't black any more; it had obviously desiccated away again to gray powder.

And the lid of the contraption was unbolted and ajar.

He took an involuntary step back, then slowly edged forward again, despite the nagging itch he felt in the back of his throat. _Too late now. _He craned to get a better angle on the rest of the room. Now he could see them, three dark masses, one near the base of the table, already flattened, with the impression that the linoleum floor beneath it was sagging slightly, though really it was more that the mass and the floor were becoming one. There was a second one on the far side of the room, with the barest human contours remaining. _He came in later, the others were already gone, maybe when he heard something happening. _

He pushed that thought aside and leaned toward the opposite edge of the window, so as to get the best angle on the floor, just to the other side of the door. That victim was as flat as the first, and oozing inexorably along the flooring.

A gust of wind rattled the glass slightly, and he jumped back. _Machines the size of molecules._ There was no way this building was airtight and even if it was, given enough time, they'd go straight through the linoleum and into whatever lay below.

He was still staring through the window, gradually becoming aware that the room wasn't large enough to account for the entire floor-space of the structure. Stepping off the porch carefully, he circumnavigated. No windows on the south side. A two-step wooden back porch and a closed door. No slime there. The rest of the back wall was a blank as well. The north side had two windows, one toward the back and just at face height. He peered in.

This room was emptier than the front, no furniture at all. He raised himself up on his toes to see the floor.

The shape was still human. The man was still, slumped sideways on the floor, one arm stretched out along the wall and cuffed to a piece of piping. The familiar bandage wrapping his hand was now bloodstained. He wasn't moving.

_He's dead_. No, he saw the smallest heave of Patterson's chest.

_Dammit, he's not dead._

Mark eased down and turned, leaning heavily against the cinderblock wall. One machine would be all it would take, that's what Mlotkowski had said. It was only that it would take a little longer.

But the floor in the front room was buckling, the door was melting away. There was no time left at all.

**Chapter 9—A Helluva Viking Funeral**

"Bad _data_?" Hardcastle asked aggravatedly. "What the hell kind of bad data are we talking about?"

"We _thought_," Halpern looked out the front window, then down at his map, and then at the paper in the ziplock bag, "we were dealing with a process to make diamonds and, well, it looked like a goddamn one-fifty-two failure."

"A 'one-fifty-two'?" Hardcastle's aggravation was not improved by bewilderment.

"Yeah," Halpern frowned. "That's a section of the patent code, you know, specs for the paper-work. We get a lot of spec failures—stuff written in crayon, perpetual motion machines. You'd be amazed. This one wasn't written in crayon but, my God, lots of tiny print, some quotes from Joseph Conrad. It looked like that Beisterling guy had tried to sort it out, but then Lloyd added a bunch of handwritten addendums and footnotes. Totally wacko. This was last summer.

"_So_ it went in the heap, with the rest of the proposals for perpetual motion machines. Then a few weeks ago we get another set of papers—"

"Around 'bout the end of October?" Hardcastle interjected.

Halpern gave a quick nod. "These were direct from Lloyd. _Lots _of tiny print, all hand-written. From what we could make out of it, he was withdrawing his original patent request. Somebody went to file it."

"And then they took a closer look at the originals, huh?"

"Must've," Halpern agreed. "You know, there were a lot of trees in that forest. It's awfully hard to see the patterns sometimes."

"And the someone who looked at the papers the second time still thought they were about making diamonds?"

"That's what we were told," Halpern admitted. "And a sudden collapse of the diamond market, even a hint that such a collapse was imminent—"

"That would destabilize the industry, maybe even some countries. _That's_ what you thought this was all about?"

Another nod from Halpern. Hardcastle let out a sigh and looked straight ahead at absolutely nothing. Finally he said, "So who might be after this marvelous new invention?"

"Oh," Halpern thought for a moment, as though the list was long and he wanted to narrow it down for simplicity's sake, "depends on whether you think they want to use it, or suppress it. South Africans—the cartel, of course—Israelis, they're heavily invested in the trade as it exists now, so, of course, Palestinians, Russians, elements of the syndicate, factions from Angola, Brazil—"

Hardcastle cut him off with a sharp, disgusted grunt. Then, after a moment's nervous silence from Halpern, the judge finally asked, "Just how much did Patterson know about all of this?"

00000

_Hardcase was right; it's some sort of damn reflex—cars and locks_. This one was a piece of cake and he felt it give to only the most minimal persuasion. _The garage in Encino, the trunk, twice, two in the chemistry building, this made, um, six. _But he was pretty sure this would be his last. He took a breath and briefly held it, knowing full well it wouldn't do a damn bit of good, as he pushed the door in gently.

He was over by Patterson in three steps, and, reaching for his key ring, realized he'd left it, and his handy handcuff key, with Paul in the truck.

_Dammit, seven. _It wasn't worth walking back for. He had the case back out and the right pick in place a moment later. _That's it. That's definitely the last._

Patterson groaned as his wrist fell free. His eyes blinked open, then squinted in confused disbelief.

"Yeah, it's me," Mark said with a sigh that expressed some disbelief of his own. "Come on, you can get up? We gotta get out of here."

Patterson was looking around, still blinking. McCormick reached for the good arm and tried to pull, only realizing then that it wasn't too good anymore either. Patterson grunted. The hand was misshapen, though not bloody. Mark winced.

"They gave up on the chopping?"

"'Other times, other manners,'" Patterson murmured, looking down at his hands. "Other guys."

"Well, this bunch is dead, too," Mark said pragmatically, "and we gotta go." He got his arm around Patterson and started to heft.

The man wasn't quite with the program yet. He gave McCormick another disbelieving look and said, "_You_?"

"No," Mark shook his head briefly. "Before I got here. Did you hear any, um, screams?"

Patterson gave a bemused shake of his own. "I might've been kind of out of it for a while."

"Well," Mark sighed again, "that'd probably explain it. I think it must've been a little noisy." He shuddered once, then got his shoulder under Patterson's less-bad arm. He said 'up' encouragingly, and waited for the man to scramble his feet back under himself.

"So, what happened?" Patterson said, a little woozily as they stood.

"Outside, _now_. I'll fill you in." He got them moving in a shuffle towards the back door. "How long have you been here?"

Patterson had fallen silent. For a moment, Mark though he'd maybe passed out again, but the man's feet were still supporting part of his weight and he was putting one in front of the other. McCormick maneuvered through the door first, and then got the other man onto the stairs. It was mostly a carry now, but once they were down onto the ground, Patterson tried to pull away and support himself against the wall.

"They're dead?" he asked. It was a breathless pant. "_All_ of them?"

"Dunno," Mark replied. "Depends on how many there were to start out with."

Patterson frowned. "Three, I think."

"That sounds about right." Mark nudged him back into a half-carry.

"Then they didn't get it?" The man had a tone of hopeful disbelief.

"No," Mark said flatly, "it got them."

They were around the side of the building, moving in a clumsy hobble and approaching the second window forward. Mark paused and turned so that the other man could see in.

"That's them, huh?" Patterson shook his head in weary disgust and very little apparent surprise. "Well, now we know why he withdrew the patent. _Idiots_," he added, with slightly more feeling and then, "We've got to contain it."

"Heat," McCormick said, steering him away from the window and along toward the front of the building. "Careful of the front porch; one of the guys, ah, _leaked_ a little."

Patterson glanced to the side as they drew even with it. He was frowning more deeply when his head swung forward again.

"How much heat?" He asked quietly.

"Paul says—"

"That kid?"

Mark nodded. "He's the one who figured it all out."

"Yeah, well, that doesn't surprise me; he's just as crazy as that Lloyd guy."

Patterson was sagging a little, and the rest of his opinion had to take a back seat to catching his breath. Mark lowered him to the ground a short way from the building. He could see Paul was already out of the truck, hands on his hips.

"Stay here," he said to Patterson. This got him a snort.

He went forward trying to gesture to Paul to stay put. It worked fairly well, though it looked like the kid was antsy as hell and about ready to come over and see for himself what was going on.

"The gasoline," Mark said, once he was within easy shouting distance. "I'll need both cans, and one of the bottles." He patted his shirt pocket and felt the pack of cigarettes and the lighter. "There's some rags, behind the seat. One of those." He frowned to himself. "The gun, too," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"What happened?"

Mark looked over his shoulder, then back at Paul. "The boron worked, but we didn't have enough. The dispersement thing was a problem, just like you said. We got about three dead guys worth of B Phase stuff in there, a little A phase, too. The floor's not looking too good."

Paul looked worried as he hefted the first can out of the truck and carried it forward.

"_There_," Mark shouted. "Right there." He pointed to a spot halfway between them. "Don't come any closer."

Paul put the can down. He was frowning. "That's Patterson, isn't it?" He was squinting at the heap near the house. "You went in to get him, huh?"

Mark nodded. "He seems okay. It was a separate room."

Paul had gone back. He had the second can and the bottle now. He was biting his lip and shaking his head. "You went _inside_."

"I'm sorry," Mark said. "He was still alive."

Paul was wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jacket.

"How long?" Mark asked. "I mean, before we can be sure if he's okay?"

"If _you're_ okay," Paul corrected tersely. Then he put his palm to this forehead. "I dunno. One machine. Just one. Might take maybe forty-five minutes. I dunno."

McCormick nodded and looked down at his watch, then up at Paul again. "The gun," he repeated, more insistent this time.

Paul went back to the truck and returned more slowly, dropping it next to the other things.

"You go now," Mark said, trying for encouraging. "Do what I told you. We'll wait here. You got that?"

Paul took a deep breath and managed a nod of his own. He took a couple of steps back from the cans, without turning around.

Mark said, "Go," one more time, firmly, and Paul finally turned and broke into a quick trot, back to the truck.

McCormick didn't wait to watch him pull away. He'd already moved forward, emptied the bottle of juice into the sand and tucked it under one arm. He stuck the gun in the waistband of his jeans, then picked up the gas cans and started forward. He carried the one can only about halfway before setting it down. The other he took the rest of the way back to the main structure.

He paused alongside Patterson. The man was still conscious and looked up, eyeing the gun and the other supplies speculatively.

"Can you head for that shed over there?" Mark pointed with his free hand toward the ramshackle outbuilding.

Patterson glanced toward the destination and then back at McCormick and his gas can. "You need some help with that?"

Mark gave a decisive shake of his head then trudged off, around the side of the building.

He stopped a few feet behind the back porch, uncapped the gas can and filled the glass bottle. He tore the rag in half and stuffed one piece into the neck, leaving a decent tail. He set it down a good, safe distance from the building. He picked up the gas can again and this time went all the way into the back room—any job worth doing was worth doing right, and he was feeling a certain dark enthusiasm for destruction at that moment. Luddite or loose cannon, he wasn't sure which.

He poured gasoline liberally on every burnable surface in the room, with particular attention to the forward wall. The remainder he puddled in the middle of the floor, in hopes of a decent amount of vaporization.

Then he returned to the bottle, sitting forlornly at a reasonable pitching distance from the back door. He wiped his hands off carefully on the rest of the rag, then scrabbled in his pocket for the lighter. This next part was all theory. He supposed that the kill radius of a roomful of ignited gasoline vapors might exceed his throwing range by any number of feet, but that's how it was with experimental physics.

He lit; he pitched. He turned his face, but snuck a peek. He belatedly hoped that Patterson had made good on his promise to head over to the other building. He decided he really didn't give a damn anymore. And all of that only occupied the brief moment before the bottle struck just inside the door, and the whole thing went up in a shuddering _whoompf_ that actually knocked a chunk of cinderblock to within two feet of where he stood, followed shortly after by a pattering of still-smoldering debris that made him retreat a few more yards.

He stood for a moment watching in grim satisfaction, then sauntered back around to the front, still studying the now-engulfed structure. Patterson was sitting not all that far from where he'd left him. He looked like he really didn't give a damn anymore either.

Still, he managed a curt nod at McCormick's approach. "You're pretty good at that."

Mark glanced over his shoulder. "First time," he said. The overhang was already collapsing in onto the porch and flames were shooting out above roof level over the front room. "Must be a natural," he added.

"And that?" Patterson pointed down at the other can with the hand that was too lumpy, but still had five fingers.

"Come on," McCormick sighed.

Patterson got one foot under him and staggered to his feet, swaying. McCormick picked up the remaining can and gave him a free shoulder to lean on. One last, dull thud of an explosion shook the ground a little beneath them.

"Propane tank, probably," Patterson said in idle speculation. "Must've been buried next to the house."

Mark nodded and they made the rest of the short tip in silence. He opened the door of the other structure. The setting sunlight pierced the dusty interior. He lowered Patterson down against a pile of burlap bags over by the wall.

He set the can down, within easy reach, unscrewed the top, and stuffed the rest of the rag into it. He pulled the gun out of his waistband, put it down on the floor next to Patterson, and sat himself down next to it. He finally let out a sigh.

"We've been exposed, huh?" the other man said quietly.

Mark gave him a sharp glance of surprise. This was the first guy since Paul who seemed to grasp the implications without having to resort to a videotape and a lecture.

"Maybe," he replied cautiously. "We won't know for a while. If you inhale one of them, it's enough. Just takes longer that way."

"How long before we know?"

Mark frowned and looked down at his watch. "'Bout a half an hour more. That's what Paul thinks."

"Damn scientists," Patterson said suddenly. "Idiots. Never think this stuff through. And guys like me get stuck dealing with the blowback."

"Us," Mark said quietly.

Patterson gave him a sharp look. "Guys like _us_," he finally agreed. He dropped his gaze to the gun, then up to the rag stuffed-gas can, sitting within easy kicking distance. "Well, it'll be a helluva Viking funeral."

As if he'd suddenly been reminded of something, Mark patted his pocket, felt the outline of the lighter, and fished it out. He touched the unopened pack of cigarettes and took that out as well.

"You smoke?" he asked Patterson.

The agent shook his head slowly. "Not since the Surgeon General's report."

"Me neither," Mark shrugged. "Gave it up about four years ago." He looked down at the pack a little wistfully. "Though if I'd had any idea . . ."

"Probably _not_ a good idea right now." Patterson gave a little nod in the direction of the uncapped gas can.

"S'pose you're right." Mark sighed. He put the lighter down next to the gun, and stuffed the pack back into his pocket. He looked at his watch again, almost impatiently.

"How much longer?" Patterson asked.

"Three minutes less than the last time you asked," McCormick said flatly. Then he gave Patterson a harder look. "How do you feel?"

Patterson squinted. "Like shit," he said, after a moment's thought. "But it's mostly the left hand."

"Think you can handle a gun?"

Patterson looked down at his hands, one bandaged and the other increasingly swollen.

"I doubt it."

"Okay," McCormick sighed. "I'll try."

"You better the hell do more than _try_," Patterson grimaced. "I'd prefer a clean kill to _that_." He nodded in the direction of the gas can again.

"Yeah," Mark nodded and added quietly, "It's not like I haven't done it before." And then, as if to change the subject, he asked abruptly, "So who the hell were those guys and how'd you wind up out here?"

"We still got, what, twenty-five minutes left?" Patterson asked wearily and then, in answer to McCormick's nod, he said, "Dunno who, not the same as the first guys." He seemed to be pondering that for a moment. "_They_ might've been from one of the Angolan factions, not sure which one. I was too busy screaming to ask." He'd added the last part with no apparent embarrassment. "Anyway, those first guys are dead, too. But, jeez, at least I left something to _identify_." Another heavy sigh. "Hey, is it still Saturday?"

Mark nodded, casting another quick look at the low hanging sun. Improbable as it seemed, it still was.

"Okay, well," Patterson frowned to himself, as though he'd lost his place for a moment. "Then I came to you." The frown deepened, as though this might be the worst thing he'd have to confess to in the entire story. "Was I making any sense this morning?"

Mark shrugged again. "As much as usual."

"And then after you left—hell, did you really go and do what I asked?"

"Yeah," Mark confessed glumly.

"Well, what _took_ you so long? No wonder you wound up in prison."

Mark took a deep breath and a slow count. He finally replied, even and mostly calm, "I took the Olds to Paul. We opened the trunk."

Patterson shook his head. "You didn't trust me, huh?"

"Not as far as I could spit," Mark replied flatly.

"So, what was in there?"

"You don't know?"

"Not exactly," Patterson admitted. "All I know is that this lawyer guy of Lloyd's was scared to death of it."

"Did you kill him, the lawyer?"

"No."

"Lloyd, did you kill _him_?"

"_No_."

"Well," Mark frowned, "_somebody's _been busy." He puzzled over that one for a moment, then mentally shrugged and said, "Anyway, there were a lot of papers in the trunk. I gave 'em to Paul and he figured it out . . . there was a jar with some of that stuff in it, too."

Patterson looked alarmed.

"Don't worry; we left it back at the house. Paul knows where it is."

Patterson still looked alarmed.

"You know," Mark looked at him sternly, "if it hadn't been for Paul, you'd still be in that house, and it was about thirty minutes away from a meltdown."

"Well," Patterson gave a long, considering look at the gas can and then turned back to McCormick, "I suppose averting the meltdown part was a good thing."

"Damn straight," Mark nodded sharply, "though I think arson definitely moves it out of the community service range." He shook his head and slumped back against the wall. He checked his watch again. Twenty-two minutes. "So, how _did_ you wind up here?"

"Ah," Patterson seemed to be trying to fit the pieces back together. "I got worried. You were gone an awfully long time. I didn't know how I'd got caught the first time out, but I figured those guys had gotten their information from someone in my chain of command—"

"Which was?"

"The Department of Commerce—the Patent Office."

"Got a lot of rogue agents there?"

"Well, no." said Patterson. "It's _patents_, see. Usually the process isn't valuable without the protection. No use stealing the process itself, you'd just wind up getting sued by the eventual patent holder."

Mark nodded.

"But _this_," Patterson exhaled, "I mean what this was _supposed_ to be. Hell, that would've been a very sharp two-edged sword. Destroy an industry; destroy the countries that are invested in it, or use it judiciously, fund your own programs with a controlled output. After all, no one could prove _how_ the diamonds were made, once they existed. Lot's of people would have been after that."

"So you figured that somebody in the department took the application seriously?"

"Yeah, before it was withdrawn, when it had already been relegated by everyone else to the circular file. This guy, X, he must've thought there was something to it, and seen all the ramifications. So, he contacted one or more of the potentially interested parties, maybe even started a bidding war."

"But then the second set of papers arrived—"

"And now, all of a sudden, other people in the department are interested, so the leak would have eventually surfaced, on top of which, Mr. X now has at least one, maybe a couple, customers he can't satisfy."

"Guys with machetes," McCormick said speculatively.

"Or maybe guys named Ivan," Patterson nodded. "Well, you know what a middle-level bureaucrat does when he's faced with a problem like that?"

"Ah," Mark shrugged, "a position paper?"

"No," Patterson smiled grimly. "First you put together a task force."

"And then," McCormick looked just as grim, "you find a patsy."

**Chapter 10—Schrödinger's Cat **

The dust was visible before they saw the approaching vehicle. Hardcastle knew it was the truck almost instinctively, while it was still too far out to be clearly seen in the failing light. And, just as certainly, as it cut two wheels off into the loose-packed shoulder and stirred up another cloud of dust, he knew McCormick wasn't driving.

The closing speed brought them together in only another minute, but Hardcastle barely waited for their driver to come to a halt before he was out the side door. Paul was still sitting behind the wheel, shoulders shaking, arms draped across the top of it, and forehead down.

Mlotkowski had pushed by him and reached the driver's door first. He opened it and said something hurried and low, just two words that sounded like Polish. Paul lifted his head and shook it. His eyes were red rimmed and there were streaks in the dust on his face.

He looked past the professor, at Hardcastle. "He's got gasoline, there's a building, cinderblock, but he said there was A and B phase in there. He went inside. He got Patterson out. He asked me how long it would be before . . . before he knew if they'd been _affected_."

Paul was looking over his shoulder now, off to the north. Hardcastle looked as well; there might have been a smudge of dark against the sky but the light wasn't good enough.

The judge reached out and touched his arm. Paul startled, and glanced back.

"_How _long?" Hardcastle asked.

Paul shot a quick look at Mlotkowski. "I said forty-five minutes. It was an estimate."

The professor nodded in apparent confirmation. "Surely not much longer than that. The onset of symptoms would almost certainly be within that time span."

"Twenty minutes, now," Paul added, look back northward again.

"Move over," Hardcastle said tersely, and then everyone else was in motion again, scrambling back to the vans.

00000

"So, I was supposed to be the patsy?" Mark asked, with barely-controlled anger.

"No, _I_ was . . . I think," Patterson said. "You were, God help us all, just an innocent bystander."

McCormick checked his watch again. "Seventeen minutes," he said, an answer to Patterson's glance. "So," he added, "who set you up? How did you wind up here?"

"Like I said, you were gone an awfully long time. I didn't know what had happened and I didn't trust the people I was working with, so I dropped a dime to someone outside of the task force."

"Who?"

"The local office of the FBI. I got the weekend duty officer." Patterson made a face. "Unfortunately, it was someone I have a little history with—"

"I can't imagine."

Patterson grunted. "Guy's name is Obervetter. The kind of straight up accountant-type they like over there. He hates my guts."

"So, if he's the one you talked to," Mark half shrugged, "then _he's_ your rogue agent?"

"Talk to _him_? 'Course not, I hadn't lost that much blood this morning." Patterson frowned down at his incomplete hand. "I made some sort of excuse for calling. Anyway, he's not the one."

"You call this FBI guy, and then the bad guys show up at the estate? That's how it happened, right?"

Patterson frowned. "But he was just the duty officer; he didn't know anything about what was going on."

"And they've got some kind of caller ID; he'd've known where you called from."

Patterson nodded, still frowning, but it had gone a lot more thoughtful.

"So X calls him," Mark pondered. "Who knows why? He mentions you, maybe just in passing, if you annoy him so much. X asks for some details, kinda casually. Obervetter spills the beans, and X sics the Ivans on you."

"So, who's X?"

"Obervetter knows," Mark sighed.

"If anyone thinks to ask him," Patterson retorted.

Mark looked up toward the dusty window, at the angled rays of the setting sun, casting shadows among the rafters above them.

"Hardcastle will," he said flatly. "He won't give up till he figures it out."

A moment passed and then Patterson finally said, "Yeah, probably not." There was a little hitch at the end of that which was followed by a sharp cough.

Mark's gaze shot down to the man next to him, now perfectly still, himself staring, no movement at all from either of them, except that maybe McCormick's own breathing had gone a little faster.

00000

Hardcastle was aware that the kid next to him was breathing too fast, almost on the verge of hyperventilating. He reminded himself that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the kid was still a kid, _what, sixteen now?_ But the smudge on the horizon had resolved itself into a low, hovering cloud of smoke, drifting up and to the east in the stiffening evening breeze that swept across the desert, and Hardcastle's mind was entirely elsewhere.

It was Paul who spoke first. "He said the boron worked," this came out in a sudden rush, with a hiccup on the end of it. "But we didn't have enough of it."

"Boron?" Hardcastle asked, only half-listening to him.

"Yeah, I told him it would, and he believed me, and we got some from the chemistry department, all they _had_." Paul took a breath and visibly shuddered. "He used it on the one who'd leaked out onto the porch, to hold it back for a while. It _worked_."

"Why the hell didn't you call us?" Hardcastle barked out impatiently. "Why'd you figure you had to do it like this, just the two of you?"

"The chemistry building was locked."

Hardcastle shot a brief and disbelieving look in Paul's direction. It took him a moment to realize that the kid was utterly sincere in his explanation.

He finally said, "I made McCormick leave his picks at home."

Paul winced at the tone. "I lent him mine," he said quietly. "And then, when we got back to the house, we saw the guys in the suits, and the vans, and we still had the picks, and the boron, and, anyway, if we'd pulled up, they would've held onto us, and nobody would've believed me . . . _Mark_ believed me," he added, almost fiercely.

_And look where it got him,_ Hardcastle thought, but kept his anger in check; he had no energy to spare for anger yet.

00000

No further coughing, and after a few seconds more, Mark felt his shoulders relax just a fraction. He saw the other man reaching forward with his unbandaged hand. His own was quicker by far, and he had the gun covered with his outstretched palm before Patterson could even touch it.

"You're gonna have to do better than that, Patterson."

"You _promised_," the man said in weary defiance.

"And I will," Mark said reassuringly. "_Really _. . .if I have to. But from what the Professor said, once it starts it won't stop with just that." He looked down at his watch.

"How much longer?" Patterson asked, still weary.

"About twelve minutes," Mark replied.

"So close." The older man let out a slow and cautious breath, and then one more cough which he made no attempt to stifle.

"It's dusty in here," Mark said, in quiet assurance. "That's all." He frowned. He thought he'd heard something—engines, vehicles approaching. "Dammit."

Patterson had leaned his head back against the wall, entirely focused on something inside of himself. He opened his eyes and shot a sideward glance.

"What?" he asked huskily.

Mark took one last glance down at his watch. "Too soon. He couldn't have gotten all the way back to a phone, and gotten help that fast." Then he stumbled to his feet, wiping the dirt from the inside of a window-pane. "And I was hoping we wouldn't have a damn _audience_." He groaned.

Patterson looked up quizzically,

"Yeah, it's Paul, and the guys in the suits, _and_ Hardcastle. Things are about to get complicated."

Patterson frowned. "What were they before?"

"Simpler," Mark said firmly. "Relatively."

00000

The one structure had been reduced to a smoldering ruin, the roof collapsed into it, and only the charred cinderblock walls still standing. Not more than seventy-five feet from that, a less sturdy outbuilding still stood. There was no one in sight.

The judge climbed out of the truck and simply stood for a moment, barely aware of the others. The vans had parked a ways farther back, and their occupants were emerging more cautiously. The wind whipped up little eddies of dust, and the sun was kissing the hills on the western horizon.

Paul came around from the other side. He shivered. The judge said, almost quietly, "Get back in the truck."

He didn't move. Hardcastle heard him say something in a half-whisper; it sounded like 'Schrödinger's cat'

The door of the outbuilding was at almost right angles to where they stood. There was a hint of an increasing shadow along the edge of it, as though it was opening inward very slightly, just a crack. Hardcastle had taken two steps toward it before he heard an aggravatingly familiar voice say, "Will ya just stay the hell back there for a few more minutes?"

He put one hand out to steady himself against the front end of the truck; the relief had been that sudden. He finally rasped out, "McCormick?"

"Stay _back_." Mark's voice rose a notch in pitch and volume as Hardcastle started to walk forward again.

"Okay . . . I'm stayin' back," the judge groused impatiently from a spot not within twenty feet of the door. He could see it was open about four inches, and Mark was peering out through it. "You okay?" Hardcastle asked.

There was a moment's hesitation, as if the younger man was calculating how much untruth he could get away with. "Yeah," he finally answered. "_I'm_ okay." A very slight emphasis on the first word.

Hardcastle saw him turn his head to the side, as though he was looking back behind himself.

"Patterson's got a little cough," Mark finally admitted. "But that's all. I mean, besides his hands, they're a mess." Another head turning, another brief side-conference. All Hardcastle caught was McCormick saying 'no, I won't, not yet, not a chance,' emphatically.

"Listen," his voice was directed outward again, "we got another, um, eight minutes here. You think maybe you could get Paul out of here? Maybe you could take him back a ways up the road. Please?"

Hardcastle had listened fairly patiently up to that point, he thought, but the slightly emphasized 'you's in this line of bullshit were more than even he could put up with. "Not a chance,' he said firmly. "I'm staying here. Maybe Mlotkowski."

He looked over his shoulder toward the cluster now gathered near his truck. Paul was near the front of the group, standing stiffly. The professor had his arm around the boy's shoulders.

Mark tried another tack. "I need Mlotkowski. I have to ask him some questions . . . not Paul. You keep him back there."

Hardcastle gave this a sharp nod as he retreated.

Paul stepped forward as he approached. He halted him with a palm and said, abruptly, with a thumb jerk over his shoulder. "He needs to ask you something." This was clearly directed at the older man. To Paul he added, very directly, "You stay _here_." He made a quick gesture to Frank, who stepped in and took custody without missing a beat.

Mlotkowski gave Paul a quick, barely reassuring pat on the shoulder and was already halfway to the door before Hardcastle had even turned around. By the time he'd caught up, the professor had moved in, even a bit closer than he'd gone himself.

Mark was talking, low and fast. "—just like the mouse, only bigger. Three of them. Patterson was in a back room. It's been forty minutes at least since I pulled him out, but after that I went back in to do the pyro stuff." Mark paused to take a breath, then he said, very flatly, "He's coughed. Just a couple times."

Mlotkowski had dropped his chin down to his chest, in thought. Hardcastle scowled.

"Whaddaya think?" Mark asked worriedly. "How much longer?"

"How do you feel?" the professor asked.

Another hesitation. "I'm not coughing. Though, damn, once you start thinking about it, it's hard _not_ to." It looked to Hardcastle as though the younger man was resting his forehead against the edge of the door.

"I'm just tired," Mark finally said. "That's all. Been a long day."

"Another five minutes," Mlotkowski said cautiously. If there is no noticeable deterioration in Mr. Patterson's condition by then, I think you may safely end your quarantine."

It had been spoken with the cool authority of a man of scientific probabilities, addressing an issue where far more than two lives were at stake. Hardcastle wondered how he would have phrased it if Paul had been in there as well. _Maybe just the same, but I doubt it._

He could see Mark's head lift a little, then nod slowly. He heard a brief, sharp cough, but from within the shed.

"Define 'deterioration'," Mark said grimly.

**Chapter 11—Raising the Bar for Crazy**

Mlotkowski kept it pithy. Mark turned away from the door and was out of sight for a few minutes. They could hear talking, but it sounded mostly one-sided.

"I dunno." Mark was back at the door. "He says he's maybe a little short of breath. He thinks he's worse, but I kinda think he just wants to get it over with."

Hardcastle looked down at his watch and asked sharply, "Is he coughing anymore?"

"No, just that once since you got here."

"Then the hell with this. Professor?"

Mlotkowski nodded. "We aren't talking about subtleties here. This would be a readily apparent progression."

Hardcastle nodded sharply in return, and stepped forward, pushing the door open against McCormick's momentary resistance. In the failing light he saw that Mark was holding his gun. He saw the gas can, open and stuffed, with the lighter nearby on the floor.

He reached down and pulled out the rag. "Where'd you put the cap?"

Mark reached into his pants pocket and fished it out slowly, then handed it over. He was moving like a man who would need to be told what to do for a little while.

"And the gun," Hardcastle gestured, once he'd secured the can. That was handed over as well.

Mlotkowski had the door propped open and there were some noises from outside—Paul's voice, Harper's as well. Then the kid poked his head around the edge of the door frame.

"It's okay," Hardcastle said, more to Frank, who was trying to do some corralling. "We got an all clear in here."

Harper stepped in past Paul and gave Patterson a quick once-over. "Looks like we need an ambulance." He turned back and departed.

Paul hadn't come all the way in. He was staring fixedly at the can and the lighter. McCormick seemed briefly galvanized as he reached forward and picked the lighter up, pocketing it quickly.

"It's okay. Everything's okay," Mark said quietly, to no one in particular, but Paul was the one who nodded back.

00000

He watched things happening. He had a strange sense of detachment, even from Hardcastle, who seemed to be hovering just at his elbow in a persistent way. Mark gathered from that, that he must look about ready to drop.

Patterson already had. He was definitely past walking, more unconscious than not, and they'd carried him out to the second van. One of the other guys in a suit was prodding the injured man a little, trying to wake him, but an older one, who seemed to be in charge, shagged him off.

"Give him a break. He looks like shit." The older guy frowned with apparent concern.

Mark felt like his brain was in slow motion, but he turned to face Hardcastle so quickly that he almost lost his balance. "The _task_ force."

"Yeah?" Hardcastle looked at him worriedly.

"That's them, right?"

"Yeah," Hardcastle nodded. "Patterson was with them, sort of."

"We gotta find an FBI guy named Obervetter."

As if on command, the guy who'd been doing the prodding turned and looked at them. Now he frowned and abandoned Patterson, strolling toward the other two men.

"_He's _Obervetter," Hardcastle jerked his chin. "This is McCormick," he said by way of introduction. "What the hell is up?"

Mark looked at Obervetter hard, then back over at Patterson, who didn't appear to be moving. He thought Patterson might have had some wires crossed, but it was too late to ask him to reconsider. He took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

"You got a call this morning, from him, right?" McCormick pointed toward the unconscious man.

"Yeah," Obervetter shrugged, "round ten-thirty. It was Patterson, sounding whacked out, as usual. He muttered something about needing to talk to one of the tech guys. I told him it'd have to wait until Monday, and he hung up. He didn't say anything about being injured, that's for sure."

"Did you know where he called from?"

"I got the number, sure, but I didn't cross-check it. I didn't even know he was working with this task force till later. Hell, I didn't know there _was_ a task force until later on." He sniffed once. "That's Washington for you. Send someone out to poach on your turf, and not a word about it until they _need_ something."

"And when did that happen?" Mark asked, the casual words belied by his tone.

"When they called today . . . for the warrant." Obervetter looked puzzled at the line of questioning.

Mark thought he'd only get one or two more, before the man balked. "What time was that?"

"'Bout ten minutes after Patterson called. That's when it started to make sense," Obervetter added. "I mean, why Patterson was hanging around."

Hardcastle was frowning. "But that was before we called the Commissioner. They couldn't have known about Mlotkowski until after that."

"Not _that_ warrant," Obervetter said. "The one Halpern called for earlier. He was looking for a car, up in Encino. Then he calls back, couple hours later, this time it's for that professor's house. I'd already had the federal judge on the horn, and the papers half-ready. Told Halpern to make up his damn mind. Then I changed the address, and we were ready for a signature."

Mark was looking across at Patterson again, still unconscious, and then he shifted his gaze to the man still standing solicitously very near him. "That's Halpern, huh?" he asked, saying the name quietly.

Obervetter nodded.

"Who mentioned Patterson first, you, or him?"

Mark said it as though he was absolutely certain about the underlying premise. Obervetter looked momentarily taken aback, and then hesitated a moment, as though he had to give it some thought.

"Ah, me, I think . . .yeah, I said something about it being a slow morning, but at least his request wasn't as stupid as the last one."

"And Halpern asked you about it, asked where he'd called from?"

"Yeah," the FBI agent nodded. "I told him I hadn't run the number."

"And he asked you for it, huh?"

Another nod, but Mark hadn't even waited for the final answer. He was walking calmly toward the van where they'd put Patterson. Halpern looked up at his approach, but couldn't have seen anything alarming in his carefully controlled expression.

Mark kept his face neutral as he stepped up, alongside the injured man. "How's he doing?" he asked, adding a small frown of concern.

"Not so good," Halpern suggested, shaking his head in apparent worry. "I'm thinking maybe I ought to just drive him in. The ambulance might take another hour. The nearest hospital is, what, Barstow?"

"I don't think he'd make it, if you drove him," Mark said, and enough of what he was thinking leaked out into his tone.

Halpern looked up again, more abruptly. Hardcastle had caught up, and Obervetter following along behind.

"You heard me," Mark repeated flatly. "This is way past 'containing', Halpern, though I gotta admit you did a damn good job. You only left one loose end, but it only takes one. It's geometric, see. Patterson talked to me, and now I've talked to them," he jerked his chin back at the judge and the FBI agent. "I don't how much of all this was _you_ directly, and how much was the guys who are already dead, but we'll sort it all out, trust me."

McCormick looked back at Obervetter again. "Patterson said someone in the task force was a rogue agent. You told Halpern how to find him this morning. Right after that some guys named Ivan picked him up and worked him over." Mark frowned down at the unconscious man again and muttered, "_That's _why you didn't care if I killed you? 'Cause you cracked and told them about this place?" Patterson's eyelids flickered, as if he might have heard that part. Mark shook his own head in disbelief. "You _have_ raised the bar for crazy."

Then, to Obervetter, "I don't care _how_ whacked-out you think this guy is; you need to make sure he gets to a hospital safely. He doesn't think you were in on all of this. You're gonna need him to help clear you of conspiracy with Halpern, here."

Some of the other members of the task force had gathered around. Halpern stepped back and started to open his mouth in protest. Hardcastle jumped into the discussion first, before the man could say anything.

"Might want to save it for when you've had a chance to get your story straight. There's an awful lot of points you could screw up on, if you try and do it extemporaneous like this."

Mark cast the judge a grateful look, and Halpern's sudden silence, as he faced the other men, spoke for itself.

00000

Hardcastle had watched Mark's slow transformation, from shell-shocked to grimly determined. He hadn't been given much time to figure the picture out, as the younger man had started fitting pieces together, but he had enough sense to realize that out here, with Halpern's group outnumbering the rest of them by two to one, he couldn't let the guy start _explaining_.

Instead, the guilty silence that followed his advice to Halpern seemed to tip the balance in their favor. Obervetter was starting to give orders, and though the senior member of the task force hadn't formally been placed under arrest, he was being ushered, firmly but politely, to the other van by Harper. No one from the task force was looking inclined to interfere.

Mark had sidled up to the judge, looking as if this last, big push had taken the rest of it out of him. He leaned in a little before he said, almost furtively, "Am I under arrest yet?"

"Doesn't look like it," Hardcastle shot back, though very quietly. "But I don't think you should be pointing that out to anybody."

This got him a thoughtful and relieved nod from the younger man.

"And you and I are going to have a little talk," the judge added firmly. "Later."

"Later," Mark nodded. "A talk. Definitely." He gazed in the direction of the burnt-out hulk of the building for a moment. Then he looked back at Hardcastle. "You know, even Patterson said I was an innocent bystander."

"_He's_ your character witness?" Hardcastle shook his head in disbelief.

"Yeah," Mark replied, looking a little miffed.

"But you said he was crazy," the judge pointed out.

"Well," Mark let out a sigh, "aren't we all."

00000

Mark warily watched the task force sorting itself out under Obervetter's direction. It really did appear that, so far at least, neither he nor Paul was their main concern. He heard Mlotkowski being quizzed again, for practical advice on dealing with what was left of the building. Hardcastle was being summoned over as well. Frank sat with a silent Halpern in the first van.

He spotted Paul, sitting sideways in the passenger seat of the truck, elbows on his knees and his head down. He wandered over to the vehicle.

"You okay?" he asked.

Paul nodded without lifting his head.

"I wish I hadn't poured that bottle of juice out," Mark added, meditatively. "You still got one of those candy bars? I haven't had anything to eat since," he paused and thought about that one for a second, "breakfast. I didn't even get a piece of that fruitcake this morning."

Paul looked up at him in utter disbelief. It seemed to take a moment for him to find any words. Then he finally said, "You almost _died_."

Mark winced; it had sounded like an accusation. "Well," he said, "almost doesn't count in dying." Then he backed up his thoughts a bit. "Okay, maybe sometimes it counts for a month in rehab, but hey, look," he held his arms out from his sides a little, palms forward, "not a scratch. I've even got all my fingers." He glanced down quickly at his hands as though this was a matter of some astonishment. "I didn't even get to _meet_ the Ivans, or the . . . whatever you call guys from Angola."

"Angolans," Paul said quietly.

"Them neither," Mark smiled. "And you got to do a little driving, and we saved the world . . . sort of." He glanced over at the blackened ruins again.

"You _almost_ died." Paul's insistent voice dragged his gaze back to the boy.

"Well, maybe," his smile went to a more sober expression, "but if I had, it wouldn't have been your fault . . . and it would have been my decision."

"It's not a damn _game_," Paul said harshly.

Mark looked at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Then he finally let out a breath, his face entirely serious now.

"No, it's not, is it? 'Bout time you figured that out," he added, a little sternly. Then he shook his head. "But sometimes, when it's over, you just have to pretend it was, otherwise you lie there awake at night and think about all the ways it might have gone wrong." He suppressed a shudder. "It was less than a foot from the edge of the porch. I couldn't have gotten back to the truck and fetched the gasoline in time. If I hadn't had the boron—"

"But if we hadn't wasted time _getting_ the boron—"

"Then we would have been sitting there in the house when the task force showed up, and that Halpern guy would have had everyone running in circles while this place went critical. He _wanted_ Patterson dead; he was going to be the fall guy. And I don't think Halpern understood just how bad this stuff really was.

"We were right more often than we were wrong this time, Paul." Mark cast a glance over his shoulder at the knot of people that included Hardcastle. "For me, that's a good day."

He finally got a reluctant nod from the boy. Then Hardcastle was striding in their direction, with Obervetter and Mlotkowski on his heels. Mark kept his expression neutral, striving for a helpful demeanor.

"Back-up'll be here in a few minutes. Ambulance, some county hazmat guys," Hardcastle said. "Where'd you put the other jar?"

Mark shot a look at Paul.

"In the basement. It's in a gallon paint can that was almost empty and kinda dried up."

"Just sitting down there on a shelf?" Hardcastle asked, with a smile of what might have been amusement.

Paul nodded. "I put some newspaper in there, to keep it from hitting the sides . . . and a note on the jar: 'Don't touch', skull and crossbones even."

The judge turned to Obervetter with a smile. "Think they found it yet?"

"It's not _my_ task force," the agent rejoindered. "I'm just here in an acting supervisory capacity."

00000

It was full dark, with further additions to the manpower still arriving in fits and starts, and both Patterson and Halpern having been taken away, separately. Harper had gone with Halpern, in yet another unmarked vehicle.

The judge had already started to notice a shift in the story. Mlotkowski had been shunted to the side, and Obervetter's version was understated, with the gray hues of an official report which no one would ever read through all the way through to the final page.

Mlotkowski was looking concerned at the direction things had taken. He fidgeted and at one point tried to interject. Hardcastle grabbed his elbow firmly and maneuvered him away from the cluster of investigators.

"Come on," Hardcastle said to the professor. "I'm gonna find you guys a ride. Obervetter says they finally found the jar and cleared out of your place. You might have to clean up some yellow tape, but you can go home."

"But—"

"_Home_," the judge insisted, keeping his voice down. "You've done what you could."

"But the danger—"

"Obervetter gets it, believe me. He'll make sure the right people know the right stuff. But you don't want it to be more than a footnote on this one, or someone's going to put two and two together and realize that you, and the kid over there, know more than they might be comfortable with."

Mlotkowski swallowed once, hard, and gave this a sharp nod. "The other notebook?"

"We'll burn it," Hardcastle said firmly. "Not that I think that'll do much good in Paul's case. But it'd be a bad idea if he handed it over now."

They'd arrived back at the truck. Paul and Mark were sitting in it, looking properly chastised. Hardcastle opened the passenger side door and summoned Paul out with a gesture.

"Where's the notebook?" he asked quietly.

Paul frowned, half-turned, and pointed under the seat.

"Good. Leave it there. You and the professor are going home." He got a puzzled look from the boy. "Try to act a little clueless, if anybody asks you anything, okay?" Hardcastle looked at him dubiously. "I know that'll be a stretch, but this would be a good time for you to just pretend to be a kid."

"I can do that," Paul said quietly, with a tone of obedience that seemed very foreign to him.

The judge saw them off, and then returned to the truck. He gave Mark a scrutinizing look by the illumination of the dome light when he opened the door the second time.

"You okay to drive?" he asked doubtfully.

Mark nodded. Hardcastle climbed in as he started up the engine.

"Paul was right, you know," Mark finally said, as he eased the truck out past a scattering of official vehicles, and back onto the dirt road.

"Seems like he is," Hardcastle admitted, "once in a while, anyway."

"Well," Mark sighed. "He was right about this, so if you want to yell at me, go ahead, but we were about eight inches away from the end this afternoon."

Hardcastle said nothing.

"And getting rid of that notebook," Mark went on, "is not the same as getting rid of the information that's in it. Paul's right about that, too; you can't unknow things."

"Well," Hardcastle said, with a philosophical sigh, "I don't think they'll get very far with the box of papers, without the notebook, and I'll trust Paul and the professor with knowing what's what. Hell, Paul may even figure out a better way to turn the stuff off."

"Maybe," Mark replied. "I think he'll be lying awake nights for a while anyway."

"Wouldn't surprise me."

"So, you gonna yell, or what?"

Hardcastle frowned. Then he finally said, "Eight inches, huh?"

"Yeah, that, or maybe a little less. And when you figure out a better way we could've done it, lemme know," McCormick added, a little defiantly.

Hardcastle shot the younger man a quick and considering look. "Yeah, I will." Then he settled back in his seat, and let Mark drive in peace.

00000

McCormick drove silently through a darkness illuminated only by the headlights of the truck. His mind edged slowly from worried, to relieved, to perplexed, where it settled for a while before circling back round to worried again.

He snuck a sideward glance at Hardcastle, who was staring straight forward with a frown of his own, as though he was still pondering the better way, and probably drawing a blank. Mark considered this for a moment, and then, almost abruptly, tapped the brake, slowed, and took a right turn onto a two-rut track that had appeared off to that side.

This had gotten the judge's attention, though the man still said nothing, as McCormick maneuvered their vehicle another hundred yards or so until it was obvious that the path they had taken was petering out. He pulled to a stop, turned the headlights and the engine off, and sat back for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark.

A multitude of stars in the western sky, the blunt darkness of a ridge off on that horizon. Night desert sounds. Not a word from the man next to him. He let out a breath and opened his door.

"Hand me the notebook," he said. "It's under the seat."

The yellow glow of the dome-light, revealed the puzzlement on the older man's face. Then he reached under the seat, and came up with the item. "Why?" he asked as he handed it over.

"You said we should burn it."

"Here? Why?"

"Because." Mark gave this a shrug as he tucked the notebook under his arm and started to turn away. "You never know. It's a long way home. I get pulled over, or, God forbid, we're in an accident. Anything could happen. Better to do it now, right? Besides, that's the first rule, 'Get rid of the evidence as soon as possible'."

I thought it was 'Be prepared'?" Hardcastle said mildly.

Mark smiled. "Okay, then it's rule number two."

"And you said that one was 'Don't get caught'."

The smile had become a grin. "Okay, they're _all_ good rules. But right now we gotta get rid of this notebook."

Hardcastle was still frowning, but he gave a quick acknowledging nod and started to open his own door. He came around the front of the truck and joined the younger man.

Mark knelt and scooped out a shallow depression in the sandy soil a few yards from the truck. Then he tore out a half a dozen pages from near the front of the book, and stood the rest upright, fanned open with the covers at a right angle. The torn pages he crumpled, all but one. He clustered them between the upright pages. The last page he twisted into an impromptu wick, and handed to Hardcastle

"Whaddaya think?" Mark lifted his chin and felt in his pocket for the lighter. "Too windy?"

He saw Hardcastle look up at the stars, and the slowly retreating eastern cloudbank. The full moon was just cresting it and now there was far more light.

"Don't think so," the judge said. "Seems to have died down some. It does that after the sun sets." The he dropped his gaze back down to the thing in his hand, and the lighter, already out in McCormick's. "Are we doing the right thing?" he asked abruptly.

Mark looked up at him with some surprise. "You're asking me? That's a switch. Besides, it was your idea, right?" He managed a lopsided grin.

"Yeah," Hardcastle admitted. "It was." Then there was a pause. The frown was back. "Doesn't mean it's right," he finally added. "Not sure what's right sometimes anymore."

McCormick felt his look of surprise deepened into something just shy of astonishment. If Hardcastle was prone to moments of moral ambivalence, he at least would have expected the man to keep them to himself. He couldn't help it, the first words out of his mouth were, "Are you okay?"

The judge started a little at the question, then gave him an open stare. "_Me_? Sure. _I_ wasn't the guy waiting out a death watch in a shed with Patterson and a gas can. I was just trying to deal with bureaucracy." Hardcastle shook his head.

Then he continued, more slowly, "I swear, there were a couple of minutes in the hallway outside the Commissioner's office, where I was that close to hauling out of there and heading back to Mlotkowsk's. I didn't know what we could do on our own, but it had to be better than listening to the system grind the facts to death."

Mark stared, but said nothing.

"I dunno," Hardcastle muttered. "I used to think the rules were the rules and if you didn't play by them, well . . ." the words strayed off into an awkward silence.

"It could be the end of civilization as we know it?" Mark offered helpfully.

Hardcastle nodded slowly. "Something like that."

"Guess not, sometimes," McCormick shrugged. Then he smiled again. "But I hope you're not giving up on it entirely—the system, I mean. I only have a year left of law school."

Hardcastle let out a slow breath, and then straightened his shoulders. "Don't worry, kiddo. It may not be a perfect system, but it's the only one we've got." He held out the twist of paper.

Mark nodded and flicked the lighter, then bent the end of the paper slightly to the flame. It caught and spread upward quickly, shielded by Hardcastle's other hand. The judge crouched and held the burning twist below the crumpled sheets, almost stifling the flame for a moment before the first of the wads caught, and then spread the flames to the upright pages.

They flared, and curled, and then, a moment later, the whole thing was involved, the fast, bright fire of ephemera, dying down after only a minute or two. The last few embers were caught on the breeze, spiraled up, and were gone to blackness against the silver night.

Mark waited a moment more, then stood and scuffed some dirt in among the ashes. "There," he said, "that wasn't so bad, was it?"

The judge made a face.

"All right, let's see," McCormick said, with a slightly speculative smile. "You've busted out of jail, _twice_, you've repossessed a car once, sort of, and now you've destroyed evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation."

"You're trying to cheer me up, huh?"

"Nah," Mark grinned again. "I'm just thinking you've pretty much earned your membership."

"Membership in what?" Hardcastle asked.

The International Order of Repo Men," Mark replied, with fulsome sincerity.

The judge gave that a moment's silent thought and then said, "I've sunk that low, have I?"

"We have a motto and everything." McCormick paused for effect. "It's 'Get the Car'," he quoted, with one hand over his heart.

"That's it? Just three words?"

"Yup, no rules, and very little paperwork."

Hardcastle nodded sadly. "I can see why you joined."

"Joined, hell," Mark laughed, "I _founded_ it. And I'll teach you the secret handshake as soon as I come up with one." He patted the judge on the shoulder. "Welcome aboard, Brother Milt."

This time he got a quick and doubtful smile as Hardcastle turned and headed back to the truck. Mark stood there, just a moment more. Then his gaze trailed off to the north and his smile faded. He felt a sudden, brief shiver down his spine. The he turned, too, and followed the judge.

**Epilogue**

Things got sorted out. On Sunday morning, two guys came with an unmarked flatbed tow truck and took the Olds. Over the next few days, Mark saw Hardcastle coming and going, and heard a few one-sided telephone conversations between the judge and Persons in Authority. The Encino people got referred to Obervetter.

An inquiry from the FBI agent about the possible existence of other papers was met with blank stares and mystified expressions. Mlotkowski had dropped down from a footnote to 'That guy, how do you spell his name?' and Paul managed to be merely a kid who was along for the ride.

A week of this passed and, toward the end, Mark was even sleeping through the night, with no more worst-case scenarios playing themselves out in his imagination at two a.m. The following Saturday morning found him over at the law library, having only a passing thought, as he looked up a reference, about what a difference a week could make.

He was done before noon, and standing out on the front steps of the library, with one more errand to run. It was a beautiful day and a short walk, not even worth unparking the car. He strolled toward the edge of campus, hands in his jacket pockets, and thoughts wandering only as far ahead as his next destination. He did pick up his pace a little—and kept his eyes down, fixed guiltily on the pavement—as he walked passed the chemistry building.

As he approached Mlotkowski's house, he saw that the garage door was open, and Paul was where he had been one week earlier. Mark shook his head, but tried for an expression of sympathetic encouragement rather than an 'I told you so.'

"How's it going?" he said, wincing as Paul straightened up in surprise, barely clearing the edge of the open hood.

The kid frowned at him. "Hah," he said in something very nearly resembling disgust. "I've been grounded . . . sort of."

Mark surveyed the kid, his surroundings, and his current activities, and let his eyebrows go up a notch.

"Okay, well, maybe it's more like 'degrounded'. I dunno what you'd call it. I'm not supposed to hang out at the library so much, and he practically threw me out this morning and told me to get some fresh air."

Mark looked over his shoulder briefly, and then back at Paul. "I'm not going to get you in any trouble, stopping by, am I?"

"Not unless you need to borrow a Geiger-Muller counter for some reason." Then Paul raised one eyebrow speculatively. "But does Hardcastle know you're here?"

"No," Mark grinned, "_I_ still have library privileges." Then he reached into his pocket. "Here," he pulled the small black case out. "I forgot to give them back to you last Saturday."

Paul looked down at the picks as though he'd seen a ghost. He leaned back a little. "Um, I dunno, maybe you oughta keep them."

Mark glanced down at them and then back up at the kid. "They're just tools," he said with a shrug. "Like a screw driver or a wrench. That's all. It's what you do with them that makes them good or bad."

Paul smiled, but it was thin. He finally said, "Well, maybe I don't want to be in the business of unlocking things anymore."

Mark nodded. "You could give them to the professor, for safe keeping."

Paul gave him a look that included everything but eye-rolling.

"Okay, maybe not such a good idea right now." Mark shrugged again and slid the case back into his pocket. "I can hang onto them for you. For now."

"That'd be okay," Paul said quietly. He still looked edgy; he was wiping his hands on a rag he'd pulled from his hip pocket.

Mark jerked his chin toward the truck and said, "Still working on the cams?"

"No," Paul shook his head, "just out here getting some fresh air. You're right, the thing is toast."

"Well," Mark frowned, "I might've been a little hasty."

"Nah, I think two years is long enough for an obsession. Time to move on."

Mark opened his mouth, then hesitated a moment. "Listen, Paul," he finally said, "you don't have to follow every bit of advice you get. I mean, sometimes you're right."

"Not lately," the kid replied, his voice very flat.

"Well, last weekend—"

Paul put the palm of his hand to his forehead and uttered a single, heartfelt word, followed by a murmured, "If that was being _right_, God help us all the next time I'm wrong." He lifted his head and gave McCormick a very intensely unhappy look.

Mark started to say, matter-of-factly, "It could have been a lot worse—" when he saw Paul go a shade paler, maybe even with a tinge of green. "Oh . . . _that's_ it, huh? The damn worst-case scenarios. The hundred and fifty choices you might've made differently and the thousand ways things might not have come out all right? "

Paul nodded, saying nothing.

"Yeah, well, let's see, the biggest one for me was, 'What if I hadn't brought the Olds to you in the first place?' followed by the two that kept me up Sunday night 'What if I hadn't let you talk me into getting that boron?' and 'What if you hadn't persuaded me to head right up to Lloyd's lab?' I dunno, I think that kinda lets you of the hook in the responsibility department."

"Then what if Patterson hadn't come to you in the first place?" Paul suggested wryly.

"There you go," Mark smiled. "We're both innocent bystanders." He reached out and patted Paul on the shoulder.

"Okay," the kid said dubiously.

"And next time we'll be more _prudent_."

"Next time?" Paul shuddered. "You know I could just _lend_ you a Geiger counter."

"Muller. Geiger _Muller._"

"Yeah," Paul grumped, but he had the beginnings of a smile.

"Listen," Mark said, after a moment's hesitation, "I have this friend; he's a shrink—"

"You have a shrink?"

"No," Mark said firmly, "I have a friend who _is_ a shrink—there's a difference, see?"

Paul nodded.

"And, I dunno, if you need somebody to tell you you aren't crazy—"

"I don't think shrinks use that term much," Paul interjected.

"No, but, well, you know what I mean."

"Yeah.," Paul said glumly.

"He doesn't think _I'm_ crazy," Mark offered hopefully.

Paul cocked an eyebrow again.

"Really," Mark added. "He says I have a bad case of expedience, though."

"Is that what he calls it?" Paul grinned slowly. "_Expedience_?" he tried the word out with an air of savoring satisfaction.

"He's a good guy to talk to," Mark pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out, after a moment's more of hesitation, "even though you're not crazy."

Paul reached out and took it, looked down at the name and number for a long second, then stuffed it into his own pocket.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

00000

Home. Promptly at noon, as he'd said he would be. Everything quiet, nothing out of the ordinary. He ducked into the gatehouse, to off-load books and papers, then he headed over to the main house, still strolling, still thoughtful.

Hardcastle answered his greeting from the den. Mark found him sitting at his desk, with a piece of fruitcake and a cup of coffee off to one side. He was sorting through some bills.

"How'd it go?" the judge asked him. It was very casual.

"Fine, less crowded on Saturdays. In and out, got what I needed," Mark replied, just as casually.

Hardcastle looked up from what he was doing and gave him a half-smile. "No, I meant with Paul."

Mark froze momentarily in his descent into the chair, then completed the movement before he said, "How'd you know I went there?"

Hardcastle shrugged. "Figured you would. Thought you might not call him, on account of thinking the professor was maybe mad at you—he's not, by the way; he said he was hoping you'd stop by. He said Paul was a little at ends."

McCormick nodded. "It's understandable." There was a pause. "He's handling it, though."

"It's a lot to handle," Hardcastle said.

"Yeah, for a kid."

"For _anybody_," the judge added. "It's good to have someone to talk to."

"Yeah." Mark nodded again, and then, after another silent moment, "I gave him Westerfield's number. You know he worries—Paul, I mean—about a lot of stuff."

"'Stuff'?"

"Yeah, all the usual stuff, plus whether or not he's crazy, and some serious issues about his personal judgment last Saturday."

Hardcastle seemed to ponder for a moment. "Well, I'm not sure if I can give the judgment thing an unqualified seal of approval, but last Saturday it was, ah, not so bad."

"'Not so bad'?" McCormick winced. "See, Hardcase, that's why you'd never make it as a shrink."

Hardcastle said nothing, just a slight acknowledging nod and a look that suggested he was expecting more.

Mark sat there; the silence got a little thick. He finally added quietly, "And do you think he's crazy?"

"No." This time the answer came without any hesitation.

"Just expedient, huh?"

"Yeah," the judge smiled; there was a thin edge of worry to it. "'Get the Car,' right?"

"Yeah, always."

"All right, maybe we could just add a word. How 'bout, 'Get the Car, _Carefully_'?"

"I dunno," Mark shook his head, his expression doubtful. "Doesn't have the same cadence."

"Live with it," Hardcastle said firmly.

Mark gave this a sober nod. "You know, the Olds," he hesitated again; Hardcastle seemed to be waiting patiently,. Mark let out a long breath and started up again, "Taking it. You know I at least used to get a little buzz from that sort of stuff . . . I don't anymore."

"That's good," the judge replied, "I think."

"Yeah, probably." He managed a small, almost gracious smile as he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a familiar, well-worn, brown case. He held it a moment, then put it down on the desk.

Hardcastle's eyebrows had gone up in a question.

"I thought . . . maybe you could hold onto these for me."

"What if you need them?"

"Then I'll ask you for them," Mark said flatly.

Hardcastle frowned. "What if you need them in a hurry?"

"It's the 'in a hurry' part that gets me into trouble."

"Not always," the judge said gruffly. "Besides, I don't want you to have to borrow Paul's set," he quirked a smile.

Mark reached into his other pocket and pulled out a black, newer case. "Yeah, maybe you can hold onto his, too."

Hardcastle's smile had faded into a more thoughtful look as he gazed down at the two cases, side by side, and then up at the man who had offered them.

"You're serious about this?" he asked quietly.

"Very."

The judge frowned, looking at the cases again. "Well," he said slowly, after a moment more of silence, "then if you are, it probably means I don't need to keep them for you." He nodded almost to himself. "They're really just tools. I trust you to use them properly."

Mark wasn't sure which part had surprised him more. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts. He finally said the obvious. "They're tools for getting into places that are _locked_."

The judge eased back in his chair a little. "Yup," he said with a sharp nod. "And you shouldn't use them unless we've misplaced a key, or you've got a damned good reason to get inside somewhere someone doesn't want you to be."

And then he added confidently, "Don't worry; you'll figure it out."


End file.
